Portrait of Jennie · reception & legacy

How Portrait of Jennie has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A famously expensive flop that helped sink David O. Selznick's producing empire on release in 1948, it has since been reclaimed as one of Hollywood's great supernatural romances — a delirious cult favourite rather than a footnote.

What's debated

The perennial fight is kitsch versus sublime: is Selznick's obsessive, effects-laden mysticism overwrought hokum, or does the film's total sincerity push it into genuine transcendence?

Its footprint

Luis Buñuel counted it among his favourite films — a surrealist seal of approval that still powers its cult — and the film's famous formal flourish, shifting stock for its storm climax and ending on a Technicolor shot of the portrait, remains its endlessly screencapped signature.

Where it stands

A cult object with a fierce following among lovers of romantic ghost stories — the kind of film cinephiles press on each other as a secret rather than a syllabus title.