Presented by The Chicago Film Society | CLICK HERE to Purchase Advance Tickets

There are supernatural romances and then there’s PORTRAIT OF JENNIE—an unassailable work of visionary delirium and towering claptrap that is easily the strangest film ever recalled fondly by your TCM-loving aunt. Starving artist Eben Adams (Joseph Cotton) has a chance encounter in Central Park with Jennie (Jennifer Jones), a ghostly girl who seemingly stepped out of the past to serve as his muse and gild his path to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her apparition reappears to Eben periodically, each time a little older and a little more plausible as a romantic partner. PORTRAIT OF JENNIE reaches back to silent cinema to find its most expressive and idiosyncratic effects, but the arty allusions and tempestuous ballyhoo are pure distillations of producer David O. Selznick’s aesthetic.