Portrait of Jennie(1948)

POOPER:
Struggling artist Eben Adams encounters a peculiar young girl, Jennie Appleton, skating in Central Park. She speaks strangely of a lost past and disappears quickly. Over subsequent encounters, Jennie appears significantly older each time, while insisting only days have passed for her. Eben becomes obsessed, learning Jennie lived decades earlier. He finds evidence confirming her story and her tragic death years ago in a Cape Cod hurricane. Driven to paint her true essence, Eben experiences a vision during a storm. He completes the portrait, capturing Jennie’s spirit just as she vanished. The painting becomes a masterpiece, haunted by her memory.

LONGER VERSION:
In New York City, struggling artist Eben Adams (Joseph Cotten) faces rejection and poverty. While sketching in a desolate Central Park during winter, he encounters a young girl named Jennie Appleton (Jennifer Jones). She wears old-fashioned clothing and speaks cryptically about things being lost or gone. She asks him to wait for her and mysteriously vanishes. Intrigued, Eben sketches her face from memory. He shows this sketch to art dealer Miss Spinney (Ethel Barrymore), who sees potential but advises him to find the girl’s true spirit.

Days later, Eben meets Jennie again. She now appears several years older, though she claims only a few days have passed. She recounts fragments of her childhood in an Irish convent and her parents, famous circus performers who drowned at sea. She mentions her guardian, Mother Mary of Mercy (Lillian Gish). Jennie again vanishes abruptly. Eben searches records, finding a Jennie Appleton listed as deceased years prior. His subsequent paintings, infused with his obsession with Jennie, gain notice.

Weeks later, Eben encounters Jennie once more, now a teenager. She speaks of a house in Cape Cod and her longing for the sea. She urges Eben to paint her “as I really am, now, forever.” She kisses him passionately before disappearing again, leaving Eben bewildered and deeply affected. He confides in Miss Spinney and her friend, gallery owner Matthews (Cecil Kellaway). Matthews investigates, discovering Jennie Appleton died twenty years earlier in a hurricane off Cape Cod.

Months pass. Eben, now successful but haunted, travels to Cape Cod during a violent storm, drawn to Jennie’s last known location. He finds the ruined cottage she described. Standing on the storm-lashed rocks, Eben experiences a profound vision: he sees Jennie (now an adult woman) struggling against the hurricane winds near the lighthouse. He witnesses her tragic death as she is swept away by a massive wave. Simultaneously, in his studio back in New York, Eben is overcome. Guided by this vision, he feverishly completes the portrait of Jennie he had long struggled with, capturing her true spirit and eternal youth just as she was lost.

The finished portrait, titled “Portrait of Jennie,” is unveiled at Matthews’ gallery. It is recognized as a masterpiece, radiating an uncanny life and emotion. A small, mysterious green stone Jennie once gave Eben, possibly an emerald from a sunken Spanish galleon she mentioned, is embedded in the frame. The painting immortalizes Jennie, leaving Eben forever connected to her enigmatic, timeless presence.