Jennifer Jones has died

silentstar5 · Post by **silentstar5** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 12:14 pm

Film legend Jennifer Jones has died in California. Here is the obit in the Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/ ... 4574.story

Einar the Lonely · Post by **Einar the Lonely** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 1:14 pm

I had no idea she was still alive. I loved her movies a lot. RIP!

Jim Roots · Post by **Jim Roots** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:11 pm

It's been a bad week for nonegenarians!

I looked at the list of films mentioned in this obituary and in another one at cbc.ca and realized I have never seen any of her films. Not one of them has a storyline that interests me in the slightest. That's not to criticize her or them; I'm just surprised to find I've apparently never seen her on screen, legend that she is. Er, was.

Jim

Einar the Lonely · Post by **Einar the Lonely** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:27 pm

I always thought she was sexy as hell. PORTRAIT OF JENNY and DUEL IN THE SUN are among my favourites.

Frederica · Post by **Frederica** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:35 pm

Einar the Lonely wrote:I always thought she was sexy as hell. PORTRAIT OF JENNY and DUEL IN THE SUN are among my favourites.

Portrait of Jenny is a lovely film, it's my favorite of hers; she also did excellent work in Madame Bovary. But I (personally) think her film career pales compared to her work with the Norton Simon Museum.

Fred

missdupont · Post by **missdupont** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:46 pm

PORTRAIT OF JENNIE is one of my favorites, a beautiful little film. SINCE YOU WENT AWAY is another really interesting and beautiful film (shot by Stanley Cortez), telling the story of the women left on the homefront during World War II, with many little personal Selznick touches (it's his handwriting on the husband's letter, and his son's Jeffrey bronze baby shoes). She was also really good in GONE TO EARTH/GYPSY BLOOD/THE WILD HEART, an interesting Michael Powell film, released in the US as THE WILD HEART, with a cut by Selznick. She almost played herself in TENDER IS THE NIGHT.

rudyfan · Post by **rudyfan** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 3:39 pm

I'm also very fond of Portrait of Jennie. Duel in the sun is just plain fun. I must also mention my other favorite, Cluny Brown.

Having been to the Norton Simon many times, I'd agree with Fred.

RIP Jennifer.

greta de groat · Post by **greta de groat** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 3:51 pm

I've always enjoyed her as well, and Madame Bovary is a particular favorite. She's also in the very strange but fun Beat the Devil. Portrait of Jenny is a wonderful film and a particular favorite of my huband--i think she is his favorite actress.

greta

spadeneal · Post by **spadeneal** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 5:46 pm

Terminal Station is awesome; one of the best romantic movies I've ever seen. I've never seen the version called Indiscretion of an American Wife and am not sure I want to.

Portrait of Jennie is a wonderful film also; it was also one of Luis Buñuel's favorites. There is a persistent rumor that he worked on it as an AD.

All in all, I would say Jennifer Jones was lucky that she was able to get into so many first class roles in terrific pictures. Bon voyage!

spadeneal

milefilms · Post by **milefilms** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 7:23 pm

As I mentioned on another forum, I'm a sucker for her in GONE TO EARTH/WILD AT HEART. That shot of her holding the red fox and her sitting in front of the fireplace is one of the most beautifully shots of great beauty. God bless her and Technicolor.

Jim Reid · Post by **Jim Reid** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 7:37 pm

She was born in my hometown, Tulsa. Her father owned a bunch of movie theaters. RIP Phyllis Isley.

Penfold · Post by **Penfold** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 2:24 am

Hugely underrated, I think.
BTW, if you have seen The Wild Heart and think you have seen Gone To Earth, you haven't ; they're radically different with Selznick not just chopping up Gone to Earth but inserting his own material, filmed by Mamoulian in The US, and adding a voiceover to hide the cracks; I have a copy of the reshoot script - probably Miss Jones' own, as it's carefully annotated - her lines only - to try and get the dialect right. There's quite a bit of it....and to be frank, The Wild Heart is, not surprisingly, a mess.

BrianG · Post by **BrianG** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 10:46 pm

My wife and I both love LOVE LETTERS and PORTRAIT OF JENNIE.

Michael O'Regan · Post by **Michael O'Regan** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 1:05 pm

I admire PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, and SONG OF BERNADETTE is a film I've loved since my youth - it's the old Irish Catholic upbringing!!

R.I.P.

Einar the Lonely · Post by **Einar the Lonely** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 2:03 pm

OK, so PORTRAIT OF JENNIE wins.

Frederica · Post by **Frederica** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 4:13 pm

Einar the Lonely wrote:OK, so PORTRAIT OF JENNIE wins.

It's a lovely film, very reminiscent of Borzage in it's over-the-top romanticism.

Fred

rogerskarsten · Post by **rogerskarsten** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:29 am

I attended a screening of PORTRAIT OF JENNIE last night at The Heights Theatre in Columbia Heights (Minneapolis metro area). There was a good crowd, and many of them had seen the film before (I had not).

I was looking forward to this, since I have read such positive reactions on this board and elsewhere, but I have to say I had mixed feelings while watching. I'll also say that I had absolutely no pre-knowledge of the plot or even the genre, though I was expecting a romance.

The opening sequence, however, automatically prejudiced me against the film. I found the prologue voice-over to be so corny and pretentious, I was ready to write off the whole thing. Joseph Cotten's voice-overs were a little better, but there was something about that device that just kept bothering me. It felt like an unnecessary intrusion.

What really appealed to me about this film were the supporting characters and the moody, dream-like interpretation of New York (I city I have admittedly never visited). Ethel Barrymore was for me the standout performance. (As an aside, I was really struck by the resemblance between Ethel and her great-niece Drew -- that chin! the brow!) The other minor characters were all well-written and acted -- the old-timers who remember bits and pieces of Jennie's life. Oh, and what a treat it was to see Lillian Gish.

Really, there is a lot to admire in this film, but oddly the main story itself just didn't wash with me. Maybe I just couldn't suspend my disbelief enough. But I also wondered whether the time-warp was being told from the right perspective. Was it Eben that needed Jennie in his life? Or was it Jennie that needed Eben in hers? Of course, they both needed each other, but why did Eben witness Jennie throughout the span of 20 years (through her physical changes), when she witnesses him as always the same age (or very close to it)? Isn't he more a projection of her own fantasies? The "dream man" who remains constant? Isn't that why she wants so badly for him to paint a definitive portrait of her, so that she too will always stay the same in someone's imagination?

I guess it's not too productive to apply logic to a fantasy, though. I'm glad I had the chance to see this one in a theater.

(And yes, I did a google search for Eban Adams this morning, having been tricked by the film into thinking he was a real artist who really painted a "portrait of Jennie" that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Was anyone else fooled?)

~Roger

spadeneal · Post by **spadeneal** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:41 am

Well, the extent to which Portrait of Jennie has made you think about it may be a good indication of its strange power.

spadeneal

rogerskarsten · Post by **rogerskarsten** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:50 am

spadeneal wrote:Well, the extent to which Portrait of Jennie has made you think about it may be a good indication of its strange power.

spadeneal

Good point!

Frederica · Post by **Frederica** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:20 am

rogerskarsten wrote:
spadeneal wrote:Well, the extent to which Portrait of Jennie has made you think about it may be a good indication of its strange power.

spadeneal
Good point!

Not to worry, we can't all like the same stuff and it seems that Portrait isn't your cup of tea. I love the film, so I'm biased, but our spadeneal is right--I've never thought about the film quite so seriously! Give Portrait a few snaps for that.

I agree, I love Ethel Barrymore in the film, she gives such an understated and warm performance; Cecil Kellaway and Lillian Gish are also wonderful. The one point where I'm jerked out of the narrative occurs during the tidal wave scene--one of the old codgers in the mariners shack is The Wienie King. "Cold are the hands of time that creep along relentlessly..." Most disconcerting. Other than that, I just go along with it and snivel into my martini at the ending.

Lokke Heiss · Post by **Lokke Heiss** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 9:16 pm

Other than that, I just go along with it and snivel into my martini at the ending.

This is from wiki:

As Portrait of Jennie was a fantasy, Selznick insisted on filming on actual Massachusetts (The Graves Light) and New York City locations (Central Park, The Cloisters, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art) as opposed to studio sets that dramatically increased the films production costs.

*Yes, yes, yes...this is what makes it work so well for me. Selnick figured out the best way to make fantasy work is to place it a realistic setting. It gives the film a charge that would be totally missing if it was studio bound.
To digress, I think when they made Briggadoon, they missed this really important idea of grounding fantasy in reality by not shooting it on location in Scotland. They could have turned an okay film into a great musical.

Portrait of Jennie was highly unusual for its time in that it had no opening credits as such, except for the Selznick Studio logo. All of the other credits appear at the end. Before the film proper begins, the title is announced by the narrator (after delivering a spoken prologue, he says, "And now, 'Portrait of Jennie'").

**Another brilliant idea. We know right away this is a 'special' film that demands a different kind of viewing.

The film is notable for Joseph H. August's atmospheric cinematography, capturing the lead character's obsession with Jennie, amongst the environs of a wintry New York. August shot many of the scenes through a canvas making the scenes look like actual paintings.

**Yes, but still using real locations.

August, who used many lenses from silent film days[2] died shortly after completing the film. He was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

**And he did a terrific job, putting a 'silent film style' on a film that needed just that kind of stylization.

Dimitri Tiomkin used themes by Claude Debussy, including Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), the two Arabesques, "Nuages" and "Sirènes" from the suite Nocturnes, and La fille aux cheveux de lin, with the addition of Bernard Herrmann's "Jennie's Theme" to a song featured in Nathan's book ("Where I came from, nobody knows, and where I am going everyone goes"), utilizing a theremin. Herrmann was assigned the original composing duties for the film, but left during its extended shooting schedule.

**I think the music is the most unusual and maybe arguable aspect of the creative decisions they made--wall to wall Romanticism. I remember being 'swept away' the first time I saw this film on TV many years ago, and the music carried much of the film. I saw it last year, and the music for me overwhelmed the story. So that's a small problem for me watching the film over and over--the music is SO strong that it bowls over a lot of the storyline.

But to argue that a film doesn't play so well on it's sixth or seventh screening because of the music is hardly a criticism.

missdupont · Post by **missdupont** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:50 pm

Selznick hired a young Jerome Robbins to choreograph a dance Jennie does at a picnic with Eben. After about 3 days of rain when trying to film on location, it basically was cut.

Lokke Heiss · Post by **Lokke Heiss** » Sun Mar 07, 2010 7:39 pm

missdupont wrote:Selznick hired a young Jerome Robbins to choreograph a dance Jennie does at a picnic with Eben. After about 3 days of rain when trying to film on location, it basically was cut.

Yeah, and that might have happened with Brigadoon, if they'd tried to film on location, it might have been a Riverworld nightmare.

But I'm firmly convinced that if you do fantasy, it helps to shoot it on location if you can. That is, if the fantasy is supposed to be taking place in the real world, if that makes any sense. Brigadoon was a 'real' town. Jenny was in 'real New York.'

Wizard of Oz is an interesting example. If they had shot the Kansas segments more or less in a real Kansas cornfield, that would have made the bookend segment of the film ever better. But one can forgive that small editorial decision. They had enough to worry about.

Harlett O'Dowd · Post by **Harlett O'Dowd** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 7:48 am

Lokke Heiss wrote: Wizard of Oz is an interesting example. If they had shot the Kansas segments more or less in a real Kansas cornfield, that would have made the bookend segment of the film ever better. But one can forgive that small editorial decision. They had enough to worry about.

I can't imagine how they would have filmed the cyclone outside of a sound stage.

Jim Roots · Post by **Jim Roots** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 8:12 am

Harlett O'Dowd wrote:
Lokke Heiss wrote: Wizard of Oz is an interesting example. If they had shot the Kansas segments more or less in a real Kansas cornfield, that would have made the bookend segment of the film ever better. But one can forgive that small editorial decision. They had enough to worry about.
I can't imagine how they would have filmed the cyclone outside of a sound stage.

I know what you mean, but at the same time, you'd be surprised how well a cyclone can be represented on a theatre stage, for example.

My daughter's ballet troupe performed Wizard on stage a couple of years ago. Long streamers extended from a hoop overhead, and at the appropriate moment, the dancers each grabbed one and ran in a circle. The effect was quite amazing -- add in some lighting effects, and it was a very effective impression.

Jim

boblipton · Post by **boblipton** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 8:24 am

Yes, but that is of necessity highly stylized. For a movie's aesthetic of verisimilitude, something more is required.

Consider the musical version of CHICAGO in which the murderesses' chorus reproduces the blood of their victims using red handkerchiefs. I think the choreography, which works brilliantly on stage, is simply ridiculous in the film.

Bob