Robert Nathan's "Portrait of Jenny" manages to express a complex idea in such simple terms that its artistic virtuosity is often overlooked. Nathan's main character is a timeless, ethereal creature, sometimes real and sometimes so strange that her reality seems dubious. She grows up at her own speed, appears and disappears at will. Her sense of time is unusual; she remembers events of fifty years ago in terms of yesterday and she knows in strange and unexplicable ways the partial shape of the future.

Hollywood has takes ever Jenny's story with results that although generally good, bog down rather sadly in one particular--a mistaken impression that a point made ones can be made fifth times. The plot is largely the same as Nathan left it, but whereas Nathan achieved his timeless effect unobtrusively, the movie continually harps on the strange by-products of Jenny's memory and her miraculous ability to hop about in time.

The story concerns a Manhattan artist, Joseph Cotton, who is striving to find himself, and the, unreal Jenny, or Jennifer Jones, who becomes his inspiration. He meets her first in Central Park, notes her pre-World. War costume and later discovers the newspaper she is clutching dates from the turn of the century. As he grows to know her better, the artist becomes more wary of the ethereal quality of his friend and there are several good scenes as the two talk about the future and the past, one never believing the other, but never really doubting. His Portrait of Jenny makes Cotton famous, but the girl, now lost, matters more than success and he finds her after a long search in a storm off Cape Cod. But although the artist senses he unreality, constantly commenting on it, the porducer was apparently afraid the point was fuzzy and employed all kinds of trick photography and mood music to accentuate the "message" of the picture.

Just to make sure of his point, Selznick decided to close his opus on a more tangible note than timelessness and ends with a hurricane scene that completely breaks the mood of the picture, literally winding it up on the rocks. An additional battery of loudspeakers is spotted around the theater; during the storm scene, they are filled with sounds of wind and surf. The trade calls this device Multi-Sound and it is when the wind is screaming the loudest, and everyone is wondering what has become of the fresh air, that Jenny appears for the last time. For some obscure reason, an extra large screen called Cycloramic Screen is teamed with Multi-Sound; given a few more idea men an the studio might have brought forth a Time Machine. A story about a timeless girl doesn't bring forth, ipso facto, a timeless picture and another device is needed to make it a classic. A Time Machine would have done the trick.