First of all, I found Jennifer Jones’ performance as little Jennie jarring. That’s right – they did not hire a little girl to play the little girl. They used forced perspective to make the adult Jennifer Jones look physically smaller.

Now Jennifer Jones was a beautiful woman, and quite young at the time of filming. Nevertheless, she did not look like a child. (I can see why they did it that way, though. When you have an adult man meeting a little girl with whom he’ll eventually fall in love, there’s a definite element of creepiness. Having the grown-up woman play the little girl [with a child’s voice dubbed in] makes it a tad less distasteful. Also, producer David O. Selznick probably just wanted more screen time for the actress. He was having an affair with her at the time, though she was married to the actor Robert Walker [no relation]. Later she would divorce Walker and marry Selznick.)

Another thing that bothered me about the movie was also visual. The titular portrait used in the movie is quite a pretty thing (Selznick bought it and kept it as a treasure), but it’s not a great painting by any stretch of the imagination.

Still, “Portrait of Jennie” is a pretty good minor league fantasy movie from a time when fantasies were scarce on the ground. You should also check out the novella, along with Nathan’s other work.