FORGOTTEN FILM - PORTRAIT OF JENNIE

Sometime around the late 2000s, probably 2007 or 2008, I was watching TV late one night, channel surfing after having smoked a bit of good weed and looking for something chill for nighttime viewing. At the time, I was a big fan of TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and was partial to exploring the classics of the golden age of Hollywood. This particular evening, I happened to land on TCM just as this odd, haunting movie was starting. Something about it immediately transfixed me and I couldn't take my eyes off its dreamy, strange interplay of light and shadows. All the way through, I kept wondering what it was I was watching, but it was only at the end ,when the title and credits played, that I found it was called Portrait of Jennie.

I immediately looked it up online and found it was available on DVD and ordered a copy. Once I got it, I watched it again (and again a while later) and just gave it another viewing last night to share it with my partner, who'd never seen it before. I still find it holds its charms quite firmly, as much as it did that first viewing.

Portrait of Jennie was released in 1948 and stars Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotton. It tells the tale of a lonely painter who meets this charming yet ghostly young girl. She seems to be from another time and another life and each time they meet, she has aged much more than the span of time which has marked the space between their meeting. Cotton's character is not sure if she's real and the whole relationship unfolds like a Twilight Zone episode. In essence, it's a love story, but it's also an allegory about life and death and eternity. Time and space twist and enfold around each other as their star-crossed paths entwine through spans of years or days, depending on your perspective.

Technically, the film is notable for some rather innovative and novel production techniques, utilizing scenes where fabric has been placed over the lens to give the image the texture of a painting canvas and mixing black & white film stock with splashes of scenes in tinted monochrome and full color. The film's cinematographer, who tragically died after the film's completion, was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award. The score of the film also uses a Theremin in the soundtrack during the segments with Jennie, to lend an air of dreamlike ambience. There are times when Jennie is shot to look like she's almost transparent, nearly fading into the background. There are also several striking exterior shots, done on location, such as those done in New York City's Central Park. among other places, which utilize natural lighting of sunrises and sunsets to magnificent and striking effect with the surrounding architecture.

The film also supplies an excellent supporting cast, most notably the legendary Ethel Barrymore as the owner of an art gallery who takes Cotton's struggling painter character under her wing to help nurture his talent. Veteran character actor, David Wayne, also turns in a lively performance as the best friend of the struggling artist.

Portrait of Jennie is a film which may be a bit old fashioned in its idealism and a bit naive in its belief in "true love", but it more than transcends these issues by its sheer commitment to its vision. It believes in itself so much, you just can't refuse its persuasions. And that's really the key theme as it shows an artist finding that the most powerful inspiration there is when creating is love.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON, LIFEFORMS

In 1994, Future Sound of London (FSOL) released their sprawling double CD opus, Lifeforms. At the time I first heard it, I thought that I'd never heard FSOL before, however, I would later discover that they'd cracked my sphere of perception as far back as 1988 with the Stakker Humanoid single, released under the Humanoid alias.

Coming from the UK Acid House explosion of the late 1980s, Brian Dougans & Garry Cobain were on the forefront of pushing electronic music into the far reaches of deep space experimentation. Along with the likes of Autechre, they had their sights set far beyond the familiar balm of 4x4 dance grooves. With Lifeforms, FSOL cast off from those shores and set the course of their synthesizer spaceship off into the nebulous galaxies of the sweepingly ethereal.

Lifeforms took electronic music well away from the rigidity of fixed beats into something much more organic. Like the title suggests, these sonic creatures are alive and amorphous, another term they'd put to use with another alias. There's nothing static or rigid about these sounds. They all seem to grow and twist like exotic flora & fauna. Songs don't start and stop, they emerge from the jungle and then slink back into the murk after having weaved their spell. Everything from start to finish hangs together as a single, expansive landscape, populated by any number of strange beasts. It's an album that fully exploits the capacity of the medium of the day, the CD. I know the vinyl purists out there may scoff at this, but this really is an album properly enjoyed on compact disc, mostly because you don't want to have to keep getting up every 20 minutes to flip sides. You want to sink into this environment and soak in it, undisturbed.

Though it wasn't always explicitly apparent, there was always a connection between the UK Acid House movement and the preceding experimental, "Industrial" scene. The fact that Psychic TV were one of the premier early adopters of the Acid House genre should be enough of a clue, but FSOL sort of took the flow of influence back to complete the circle with this album, pulling in Industrial's more dark ambient aspects and often directly sampling sources such as Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey. This album is a vital link in that chain.

Lifeforms also makes the psychedelic facets of the electronic music of the day most fully realized, doing more than paying lip service to the experience by virtue of the graphics and design aesthetics. This really is music for serious tripping, well off the grid of the dance floor. Dougans' & Cobain's commitment to this culture would become much more explicit in later years as they dove headlong into full on psychedelic "acid-rock", sometimes to the dismay of fans more committed to electronic music.

In the long run, Lifeforms still stands up to serious listening to this day, sounding just as alive and organic as it did the day it was released.