"The Age of Innocence" (the film)

Winona

You're out of your fucking mind. It's a fantastic film.

Scorcese heard from at r2.

Beautiful film.

Well, I;m not Scorsese (I wish) and I loved it, too.

Excellent film.

I have to agree with r2. I love this film. Daniel Day-Lewis can do no wrong in my book. I thought Winona's vapid personality and limited acting ability actually worked in her favor in the role of May. If I find any fault in the casting it is with Michelle Pfeiffer as the Countess. The supporting cast was excellent. And the sets, costumes and period detail were fantastic.

It's a wonderful film. What is OP thinking?

What R7 said re: Winona Ryder. She was perfect in that role, and I say that as a Winona hater.

It's unanimous: Della is a moron.

I want to have sex with all 3 of them.

The book is a lot better.

I agree the film is fantastic and the details from Whartons book are all in there. Although I did want to slap Winona's simpering face at the end.

thats exactly how youre supposed to feel about WInona's character, dear... AMAZING gorgeous film

I know but I want slap Winona in every film she's in , Dear.

Scorcese's attempt to create his OWN "The Red Shoes"...which is ironic considering he already HAD with "Taxi Driver".

He fails mostly in part because the story is MUCH to contrived,the aesthetic FAR too self-aware and many of the performances register inorganic and pretentious.

I swear to CHRIST if I would have had to hear Winona Ryder coo "Nyoo-land" in that fake-ass,forced Mid-Atlantic accent(which by the way I love when it's done right)just ONE more fuckin' time....

Before i get excoriated I should probably clarify it is the SCRIPT to me that is contrived...not the novel.

Scorcese's triumph because he got an actual performance out of Ryder.

Della, try watching it a second time. You will love it!!

Joanne Woodward's narration was great in this as well.

Winona lost to a little girl. How humiliating.

There is nothing "Red Shoes" like in this film, at all. Nor does it resemble anything Michael Powell ever made. It's a wonderfully cruel and beautiful movie.

Bad?!? I bet you thought "Dangerous liasons" with Glenn was bad too! Fantastic movie,probably far too subtle for most under 30 now.As an aside,I lived in troy New York where most of it was filmed,the scene where they are leaving her aunts is actually the Troy public library.Ive watched this movie dozens of times.I never get tired of it.

Totally agree with R7. Wanted to love this film but Michelle Pfeiffer ruined it for me. Totally miscast and her presence felt very anachronistic. She had no understanding of how to play an old money female from that culture or time period and gave a very stilted high school performance. She is much stronger portraying women in a more modern era.

Oh Della, no.

Off to the Interior Illusions lounge with you, the grown-ups have to talk.

[quote]Scorcese's attempt to create his OWN "The Red Shoes"...which is ironic considering he already HAD with "Taxi Driver".

No. It's his attempt to create his own "The Heiress," as he's said directly many times.

There are some genuinely great sequences in the film--the opening sequence at the production of "Faust" at the Academy of Music, the great archery sequence (one of the most sophisticated thing Scorsese's ever done), the scene at the melodrama, the big climax at the dinner when Newland realizes everyone's conspired against him. The minor performances are absolutely perfectly cast (Miriam Margolyes, Alex Smith, Sian Phillips), but of the three major performances only Winona Ryder really is terrific--which is remarkable given that she's usually one of the worst actresses ever and the other two are two of the finest screen actors working.

Scorsese said he was frustrated he didn't have a bigger budget for this film, and there are weird scenes where you can tell he's had to scrimp a bit (the exact same room that's used as the Van der Luydens' parlor, for example, is clearly also used as their dining room in the immediately following scene).

I saw it as a teen. I love Wharton's novels. I thought it was okay. Not great, not horrible.

Della, I *almost* agree with you.

"Although I did want to slap Winona's simpering face at the end."

Newland Archer was the one I wanted to slap, so much misery and drama could have been avoided if he wasn't such a conformist and an idiot. I can't blame his poor wife for standing up for her own interests, when he put her in such a horrible position for no good reason. I mean, she told him that if he had feelings for someone else they shouldn't get married, but the damn fool insisted!

I agree that Pfeiffer was the weak link in the cast. She didn't seem old-money, she didn't seem 19th century, and she didn't seem European. Maybe it was her bad 80s perm.

Agree with R7 and R24 that it was a great film but for the casting of Michelle Pfeiffer as Countess Olenska. Didn't we have a thread one time discussing who should have had the role? Reading the book I always pictured the Countess as a brunette and May as a blonde, although Winona Ryder was perfect as May with her breathy vacantness.

The film was pretty true to the book, which is important to me. I can't stand when a movie takes a perfectly good book plot and renders it unrecognizable.

Great film, but maybe not the OP's cup of tea.

R23: I think that exterior is actually the RPI fraternity dubbed "the castle" on 2nd St.

I didn't like it either, mostly due to Winona Ryder's tremulous voice and Michelle Pfeiffer's bloodshot eyes. Both were miscast. He should have used British actresses. Gina McKee would've been fabulous.

[quote]Scorcese's attempt to create his OWN "The Red Shoes"...which is ironic considering he already HAD with "Taxi Driver"

How is THE RED SHOES anything like TAXI DRIVER? The former is about ballet, and the latter is about an unstable Vietnam War vet.

Don't you bitches understand the concept of analogy?

What I was saying was that in making "The Age of Innocence" I sense Mr.Scorcese was trying to create a exquisitely crafted, asthetically designed "piece of art" that might effect the viewer much the same way he felt as a boy seeing "The Red Shoes" for the first time ....an experience he has recounted in numerous interviews.

My opinion is that in trying to engineer beauty and conjure up a "magnum opus", Scorcese lost that guileless,unselfconcious element that makes the Powell/Pressburger films,despite their high degree of stylization, so effortless and natural.

So when I say "Taxi Driver" is to Scorcese what "The Red Shoes" is to P&P I'm merely asserting that I think Scorcese,whether he would acknowledge it or not,had to me ALREADY come up with his own personal masterpiece.

Say "uncle" Della.

Say "uncle" Della!

UNCLE! Now let me up off the floor. It's being offered free of charge until February 4th (Charter Communications cable.)

I'll watch it again.

I know Wharton is showing us the stilted, social rules and appearances obsessed tribe which was NY City society. (I didn't read the book so right before I watched this I went to WIKIPEDIA for a quick primer.)

Still, somehow, I found it to be too much and not quite enough. I think some of you here who have misgivings about the casting may be right.

Oh, and btw, I loved "Dangerous Liaisons" and the most recent "Anna Karenina" with the love to hate her Kieara(sp) Knightly.

That's it, r34! The whole film felt forced.

"I didn't like it" and "it was bad" are not interchangeable terms. I'm always amazed at how often people confuse the two.

[quote]He fails mostly in part because the story is MUCH too contrived,the aesthetic FAR too self-aware and many of the performances register inorganic and pretentious.

I think that was deliberate. Pretentious, false, hyper self-aware and contrived/inorganic very much describes the environment those people were living in.

Winona's performance didn't altogether work for me either. I think in part it's her voice?

It's just not very good.

You may all suck my dick.

Fuck all you cocksuckers.

I once met the criminally underemployed director Terence Davies who directed The House of Mirth starring Gillian Anderson; his film is a superior Edith Wharton adaptation to Scorcese's Age and I told him so. Terence met with Martin in New York to discuss Wharton and adapting the two novels for the screen. Martin took him for a nice lunch at Balthazar and picked up the cheque.

I love the cross fades to colour saturated frames in Age and Pfieffer is ravishing, but Terence captured the sheer nastiness of upper class NY society more acutely.

Miriam stalked my friend's female drama tutor at RADA. Was infatuated, wouldn't take no for an answer.

A meticulous to period and detail film adaptation of "The Age of Innocence" with much attention to cinematography and interiors and atmospheric quality is exactly the sort of thing I would like...were it done well.

Scorcese's film missed the mark in too many ways, however. I'm glad I watched it, I enjoyed it in (small) parts, but the confluence of some bad casting, some odd directing and editing choices, the poodle atop Michelle Pfeiffer's head, considerable sloppiness in the mash-up period details, and some peculiarly ineffective choices in the lighting and color palette didn't add up.

The 1870s were an amazing fertile source for ideas and highly developed aesthetics, by the film misses the boat.

Of course there will be historical anachronisms, but when so much else falls flat, the highly touted meticulous accuracy of these details comes to the foreground and it's a catalogue of bad choices, or good ideas not properly realized.

Had the details been great, I would have enjoyed it visually; had the acting and direction and editing been great, I might have overlooked the wrong period details. The combination against a lot of hype didn't excel on any level and the whole thing came off as highly labored (coincidentally not unlike any diCaprio performance.)

Not a great period film, not a great adaptation of Wharton, not great performances or direction nor even cinematography, and none of it comes together well.

Wonderful film. Lush and beautiful and tragic. Those who deconstruct it (and completely eviscerate any enjoyment) like tiresome, pedantic, puckered ass posters such as R44 wouldn't enjoy ANY movie ever made! Good lord. Violent eye roll.

Ignore them, Della. You're right. Scorcese does not know how to extend himself beyond his limited range. The creeps here are just the usual cunts.

It is a great, gorgeous, heartbreaking film. Yes, there are some indulgent moments and whether Ryder's performance is actually good is a lingering question, but your post is uncalled for, Della.

[quote]He should have used British actresses. Gina McKee would've been fabulous.

Yes, I don't know why more studios don't gamble vast sums on homely, unknown British actors.

Amazing film. I purchased the DVD which I prize. I'm starting to doubt your taste, Della.

It was bad because it was illustrated, not dramatized. Scorcese just fetishized all the social/cultural details in the book and then had Woodward narrate the story. It was DOA on screen. Just horrible. Not even pretty to look at people-wise because of Michelle Pfeiffer's hair.

Also missed some of the underlying takeaways from the book. At the end of the day, if you go in the direction you want to go and don't back down, people come around, even in the society level - if you have money. In the book, people started going to the Michelle Pfeiffer character's salons or events or whatever it was she was attending (it's been years) because they kind of felt, why not after awhile. Then in the book there was a guy who caused an enormous scandal both financially and maritally, and half a generation later was marrying his daughter off to a pillar of society.

The movie sort of made out that you couldn't survive an unorthodox choice of spouse, or upsetting the apple cart. Maybe the protogonist thought this, but then Wharton shows many instances around him where people do.

It all comes down to money. If you have it, you will end up being accepted into society because at the end of the day society is pragmatic. Especially if you play along with their rules.

The ones who rebel and get cast out are those without money, such as Lily Bart in House of Blues. She only had look and a name/family, zero money; she kept sabotaging her chances of marrying money because she didn't love the man, and at the end of the day she was cast out because a wealthy society woman scapegoated her for her own indiscretions. As she had no home or money of her own, and all the invitations dried up, she ended up in a rooming house.

^should be "House of Mirth", obviously, not "House of Blues".

Jonathan Rosenbaum didn't care much for the film, either. He pretty much expressed all the problems I had in the film in his very thorough review:

[quote] If the project winds up a noble failure, testifying throughout to Scorsese’s resourcefulness in plowing through an impossible mission — much better to my taste than Cape Fear, and considerably more likable (if less successful) than GoodFellas – it may be because the subject is diametrically opposed to what he usually does best as a filmmaker. I had assumed that the Visconti of The Leopard would be Scorsese’s key model; 15 minutes into the movie, I realized that Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons was exerting an even stronger influence. But the fact remains that Welles — and Booth Tarkington (the author of Ambersons), Visconti, and Giuseppe Tomasi (the author of The Leopard) — are all better equipped to understand Wharton’s world, by virtue of their upper-class backgrounds, than Scorsese is. Even a bourgeois type like Antonioni seems better suited to capture the faint tremors and enduring ambiguities of Wharton’s fiction.

He even echos some of R50's complaints about the movie.

[quote] Scorsese’s street-smart, Little Italy origins are no disgrace; they simply point his perceptions in a certain direction. But trying to focus on Wharton’s world inevitably places him in the role of a drooling paisan with his nose pressed against the window. It’s one thing for Wharton, in the midst of a 362-page novel, to describe a dinner that Newland Archer, the lawyer hero, shares with his employer: “after a velvety oyster soup came shad and cucumbers, then a young broiled turkey with corn fritters, followed by a canvas-back with currant jelly and a celery mayonnaise.” But it’s quite another for Scorsese, in a 133-minute movie, to highlight each of these items in a separate decorously lit and framed shot. The novel is already consumerist, to be sure — Wharton’s method of mainstreaming Henry James is very much a matter of simplifying the style and amplifying the set decoration — but what figures as a fleeting aside in her prose becomes a TV ad for Gourmet magazine in the movie.

No one will be mentioning this film as one of Scorsese's crowding achievements in an otherwise illustrious career.

Should be *crowning* achievements.

why did you think it was a bad film, OP?

When I first saw it I thought it was just ok, nothing special, but I also saw it recently. Perhaps it's because in the meantime I've read Wharton's novel, but now, rather than the usual experience of liking a movie less when you love the book, I appreciate the movie far more.

Even when I first saw it I loved the final scene; still do.

I really loved this movie, as well as the book it was based on. For that matter, I love everything Edith Wharton wrote. Magnificent author.

I agree with Della. The film was dull and Michelle was miscast.

Excuse me r46 but I think most of us stated our opinions without being disrespectful to Della or anyone else. You are crass, inarticulate and incapable of stating your case without being an embarassment to yourself. At least r44 KNOWS why he doesn't like the film. Even if he did read like a cross between Rex Reed and Anton Ego.

It's great, but too long.

My GAWD, Della has a right to an opinion, just like everyone else.

Dumb Della strikes again.

I'm actually more interested in r43's gossip.

R50 makes good. points.

History is only really interesting for its complications and nuances, not convenient oversimplification about the inferiority of past morals and manners.

In the late 1860s and through the 1870s, bankruptcies were commonplace in the extreme in the U.S.; small and prominent people went gloriously bust, time and again, and money had more to do with one's social position than an arched eyebrow or a calling card folded over on the wrong corner.

Just another example of how Scorcese got lost in the trappings and lost the story. It's not a horrible film, but it's not a great one, and it is a squandered opportunity to have been great or at least very good.

r60 nailed it. Della is a moron and should be banned. Thread closed.

See Della? Now look what you've done! You've brought out all the DL Posters with Pretensions to Film Criticism. Now they'll never go away.

I don't think Della should be banned, but I don't get why DL falls all over itself for a middle-aged heterosexual woman from the midwest who has a functional IQ under 90.

[quote][R60] nailed it. Della is a moron and should be banned. Thread closed.

No closing the thread! You should be banned for banning someone else for a difference of opinion.

Terrence Davies' House of Mirth was vastly superior to this film (which, itself, is not some kind of abomination).

I really liked it.

One R in Terence petal

[quote]So when I say "Taxi Driver" is to Scorcese what "The Red Shoes" is to P&P

??? "P&P"?

Oh, [italic]dear.[/italic]

He just could not get the period decor right. There were mistakes in just about every scene, many of them were just dumb. I could see somebody going "oh, let's just add this - that would be cool"

Like what, R71? Be specific.

Thanks, R69. Thank you for your vigilance.

Day Lewis should play another tortured romantic lead. Sick of his freaks and speciality turns.

I loved it when FAMILY GUY made fun of it and Winona:

I'm with OP. Didn't really like it. Scorsese was no match to Merchant & Ivory when it came to films of that period.

The characters were so utterly reserved that the film lacked any genuine emotion.

r75, that was hilarious

Was Abraham Lincoln a freak or a "speciality turn"?

"Fantastic movie,probably far too subtle for most under 30 now"

Yeah, because old people have such great taste

Loved it!

R62 - yes, Scorcese got caught up in the trappings. I enjoyed the book so I really looked forward to the movie, but he did nothing with the material but point at it. The movie was static and flat. The material was Wharton's, so it's not going to be without interest, but all he did was zero in on the trappings, as if the trappings were the story - and they're not.

Della and some other people on this thread have baby taste.

"The movie sort of made out that you couldn't survive an unorthodox choice of spouse, or upsetting the apple cart. Maybe the protogonist thought this, but then Wharton shows many instances around him where people do. It all comes down to money."

Which brings up a very important question... DID Ellen or Newland have enough money to get away with breaking the rules?

Newland was a lawyer, did he have serious family money, or did he live on the income from his practice? If so, did he have a society practice, would social ruin have meant financial ruin as well? And Ellen, I know she went bust, but could that have been avoided if she'd divorced her husband and kept him from blowing her fortune?

Please respond if you've read the book.

[quote] "The Age of Innocence" is one of Scorsese's greatest films, improperly appreciated because, like "Kundun" (1997), it stands outside the main line of his work.

[quote] I recently read The Age of Innocence again, impressed by how accurately the screenplay (by Jay Cocks and Scorsese) reflects the book. Scorsese has two great strengths in adapting it. The first is visual. Working with the masterful cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, he shows a society encrusted by its possessions. Everything is gilt or silver, crystal or velvet or ivory. The Victorian rooms are jammed with furniture, paintings, candelabra, statuary, plants, feathers, cushions, bric-a-brac and people costumed to adorn the furnishings.

[quote] These people always seem to be posing for their portraits, but Scorsese employs his invariable device of a constantly moving camera to undermine their poses. The camera may be moving so subtly we can hardly tell (unless we watch the sides of the screen), but it is always moving. A still camera implies an observation, a moving camera an observer. The film's narrator observes and comments, and so does the camera, voyeuristically. Occasionally, Scorsese adds old-fashioned touches like iris shots to underline key moments. Or he'll circle an area in brightness and darken the rest, to spotlight the emotion in a sea of ennui.

[quote] His second strength is a complete command of tone. Like her friend Henry James, Edith Wharton seldom allowed her characters to state bluntly what they were thinking. They talked around it, inhibited by society and perhaps afraid of their own thoughts. Wharton, however, allows herself a narrator who does state the plain truth. At a key point in the story, May, now Archer's wife, makes comments that reveal how frankly she views the world, and then quickly returns to her tame and naive persona. The narrator tells us what Archer cannot, that he wonders "how such depths of feeling could coexist with such an absence of imagination."

[quote] Consider the most crucial passage in the film. Archer has decided to take a decisive step, to break away from his flawless but banal wife, be with the Countess and accept the consequences. Then the prospects of the Countess change dramatically, and his wife tells him something he did not expect to hear. He is an intelligent man and realizes at once what has been done, how it cannot be undone and what as a gentleman he must do. His fate is sealed. As he regards the future, the narrator tells us what cannot, in this world, possibly be said in dialogue:

[quote] He guessed himself to have been, for months, the center of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears. He understood that, somehow, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved. And he knew that now the whole tribe had rallied around his wife. He was a prisoner in the center of an armed camp.

[quote] The film ends with a sense of loss, sadness and resignation, reminding me of the elegiac feeling in Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons." The final scene, on a park bench in Paris, sums up not only the movie but Scorsese's reason for making it; it contains a revelation showing that love is more complex and secret than we imagine. Archer's son Ted says his mother told him his father could be trusted because "when she asked you to, you gave up the thing you wanted most." Archer replies, "She never asked me." We reflect, first, that she never did, and second, that she never needed to.

Fucking LOVED it !! It's just another version of Jack & Ennis.

Newland Archer almost certainly had enough money to live well on his own. He was from several intermarried wealthy old Knickerbocker families (his mother is a van der Luyden, the most esteemed and solid wealthy family in the novel's NYC), so like Edith Wharton herself he probably had several trust funds willed to him.

Ellen had her money from her husband the Polish Count Olenski, which was enough for her to live quite well on.

I thought that Ellen was reliant on an allowance from her grandmother. Didn't her husband run through Ellen's money?

I really didn't like it.

I felt Pfeiffer and Ryder were miscast. After Goodfellas, I think Scorcese's best 90's movie is Bringing out the Dead (although many people disagree with me).

r44 and r71, what are the anachronisms and period inaccuracies you're referring to (other than Pfeiffer's hair)?

Ebert was a major Scorsese fanboy (like Tarantino, Scorsese could do no wrong in his eyes), so it's no surprise that he would find this film to be one of Scorsese's best.

It still doesn't change the fact that most critics have virtually forgotten about this movie and consider it to be a minor work.

Michelle Pfeiffer's hair is *not* an anachronism. Full, curly bangs were a popular style of that era. Queen Alexandra:

Jennie Churchill:

Lily Langtree:

R90: As others have demonstrated just above, Pfeiffer's hair was not anachronistic. It was just distracting as all hell -- the period hair seemed to wear Pfeiffer, as they say, not the other way around.)

There are lots of details that were solidly got right for 1870s NYC, but lots of liberties, too. The selection of paintings as backdrops to key scenes was clearly important to Scorcese, but often wrong. Fernand Khnopff's "Caresses", the Oedipus and the Sphinx sort of Symbolist painting is jarringly wrong, having been painted in Belgium in 1896; maybe it was just a nod to Visconti. There are other "wrong" paintings as well. "Expectations" by Lawrence Alma-Tadema dates to 1885, not so long after the 1870s chronologically, but it has a very non-1870s color palette and lightness to it -- a palette that Scorcese evidently preferred and used extensively in his film. (I can't remember if Leighton's "Flaming June" of 1895 is in the film; it shows up in so many films that I may be wrong.)

Besides paintings that post-date the period and style of the 1870s, there are decorative arts. Dining and its trappings and customs feature significantly in the film, but the silver flatware and hollowware are usually wrong for the period and definitely wrong for the social class. There are pieces of earthenware that were 30-some years old in the 1870s that would have been considered common goods for the lowest rungs of the middle class (when they were new) sitting aside pieces of porcelain that post-date the 1870s.

Lighting fixtures are genuine, but often of the wrong period. Except in the Countess's digs in "Turkish Corner" taste, many interiors are of the period but the layering of pattern is simplified and there's way too much fussy lace - favored by working and lower middle classes and rarely seen in highly expensive and fashionable 1870s NYC rooms. Much of the furniture is right, though often it's arranged in more modern ways than would have been seen in the 1870s.

Not many people notice or care about these small things, and if the film had lived up to its promise as Wharton's story, I would have noticed but overlooked them. Obviously a lot of effort and talented people had a hand in the production: a bad soup tureen doesn't make a bad film, but this is a film that's so weak that it becomes not the sum of its parts but a catalogue of soup tureens and potted palms (much overused in the film) and silver flatware and Belgian Symbolist paintings. There's not much else to watch beside the misplaced crockery and Day-Lewis and some of the good supporting cast.

I stumbled on this website which has a lot of stills of the interiors - and a lot of period anachronisms.

I don't care if the ladies of the late 19th century curled their bangs, THAT IS STILL A BAD 80s PERM!

The style is too loose and touseled to be true to the period, Victorian ladies pinned their hair firmly into place, and nothing but the bangs was allowed to run wild. And ladies with curly hair twisted most of their hair into knots or buns, they'd never pile it up in a heap like that. So yes, the hair may not be as anachronistic as it could have been, but it's still a jarring anachronism.

You can see now why Anna Paquin BEAT Winona Ryder for the Oscar.

Going into Awards season she and Rosie Perez were the odds on favorites, but people said they split the vote to allow Anna to come up the middle.

But a win is a win, and Winona went home empty handed.

An excellent film. Wonderful performances, costume, set design.

[quote] Not many people notice or care about these small things

Actually I think you're the only one.

I care about the mistakes. They weren't necessary, they were lazy. Julian Fellowes has a historical 'auditor' that keeps them out of trouble, for the most part, on Downton. I enjoyed reading the two postings of some of the errors and going to that webpage.

Historical accuracy would have shown they were truly serious about creating this film.

We haven't even mentioned the women's make-up. They didn't even bother to be accurate with that.

it's supposed to feel forced and contrived, to echo the society it portrays.

Regarding the anachronistic period decor - to quote Stanley Kubrick, "Realistic is good. Interesting is better."

It may be a "forgotten" Scorsese film, but just look at this thread. Not many DL threads are breaking 100 posts these days.

For me, it packs the biggest emotional payoff in his entire body of work, partially of course because the main character isn't a sociopath.

Goodness. After reading r95's post I feel like a toddler who can't figure out how you got my nose.

I fear that Michelle Pfeiffer's perm will tear DL apart like Norweigan Catholics in Bay Ridge.

Pfeiffer's hairstyle might have been distracting, but not only was it correct for the period, but Wharton herself specifies it in the novel. Countess Olenska has had hair done in "Josephine curls," which were very fashionable again in the 1870s.

I remember being thrilled when the previews for this film were being shown. Then I saw the actual movie, which was a major snooze-fest. Competent, often lovely to look at, and lethally dull. Was not surprised at all when a little girl beat Winona Ryder for the Oscar, cause Ryder was hugely underwhelming. Film wasn't nominated for Best Pic either, despite it being exactly the kind of movie AMPAS typically loves to nominate.

All that said, was I too young to get this film? The love for it on DL makes me wonder if I need to see it again.

Winona Ryder's Spock-ears were distracting as hell; hair & makeup should've covered them, or taped them back, or something.

I found this motion picture most good.

It's such a frustrating story, everything could have been okay if SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER Newland had just helped Ellen get a divorce. He could have dumped May and married her, and if society disapproved, they didn't have to stay in New York. Certainly they had enough money to live on.

Newland and Ellen could have gone to Europe as a married couple and found a place where they were accepted, and if he wanted to stay in the US where he could practice law, they could have gone to Chicago or San Francisco or some other city where they could have been social lions. If ONLY Newland could have admitted that it's okay to do things a little differently...

In other words, R110, completely rewrite Wharton's book.

Nobody's talking about rewriting Wharton's book, r111. r10 was simply pointing out how the characters could've changed their fate and lived happily by not playing by the strict social "rules" of the time. It's called having a discussion.

Uh no, my eye roll is much more violent than yours.

It's on TCM right now. Forgot how intrusive and annoying the voice-over narration is.

This may or may not be an anachronism. I haven't seen the movie in forever, but I recall a party scene where all the high society folk (men and women) are gathered and socializing, and on the walls are huge paintings of naked women everywhere. It didn't ring true, because this was during the Victorian Era when people covered the legs of their furniture and kept male and female authors apart on the shelf unless they were married to each other.

can anyone confirm?

R115: Nude women and men were very much the subjects of art education in the 1860s and 1870s, and there are many paintings of these subjects (often depicted --and made more acceptable-- in some historicist or exotic setting such as Orientalist art.) There were scandals about art exhibitions of nudes, and questions of the propriety of allowing women to see nude paintings, but nude pictures were a constant through the Victorian period.

Sex and nudity were at once suppressed and everywhere in Victorian life. The houses of rich people of liberal views had nude paintings in their galleries and on their walls, sometimes a few, sometimes many.

Segregating men and women authors on bookcases was the custom of an especially prudish few, not the standard procedure. Some museums did have "ladies' hours or days" for viewing exhibitions, though this was more to protect them from caddish men in the galleries, not nude pictures on the walls. As for hiding the legs of furniture...absolutely not (here are two chairs from the NYC firm of Pottier & Stymus from the first half of the 1870s):

The party you’re referring to, R115, is at Julius Beaufort’s house and it’s all about how he’s outlandishly pushing the envelope, socially wise, with his extravagant life style.

"It's such a frustrating story, everything could have been okay if SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER Newland had just helped Ellen get a divorce. He could have dumped May and married her, and if society disapproved, they didn't have to stay in New York. Certainly they had enough money to live on.

Newland and Ellen could have gone to Europe as a married couple and found a place where they were accepted, and if he wanted to stay in the US where he could practice law, they could have gone to Chicago or San Francisco or some other city where they could have been social lions. If ONLY Newland could have admitted that it's okay to do things a little differently..."

Of COURSE it's a frustrating story. That's the whole point. Ellen herself says that she and Newland would not find happiness anywhere, because they would be flaunting convention and be the subject of scandal wherever they went. And Newland would never forgive himself for not doing the right thing nor would Ellen want him to. She loves him for being the proper gentleman that he is, however old-fashioned. He is a product, if not a victim, of his up-bringing.

[quote]I recall a party scene where all the high society folk (men and women) are gathered and socializing, and on the walls are huge paintings of naked women everywhere.

It's only one painting, at the Beautfort's ball near the beginning of the film, and the narrator makes special mention of how Julius Beaufort "had the audacity" to hang a Bougeureau nude allegorical painting where everyone could see it. It wasn't typical at all, and was considered a scandalous gesture.

The anecdotes about the Victorians covering the legs of their chairs and tables and keeping male- and female-authored books apart out of prudishness are urban myths about the Victorians, but they aren't true.

SPOILERS!

r110, Ellen was willing to run off with Newland until she found out that May was pregnant. (May lied about this to Ellen initially, but it turned out to be true after all.) Ellen could let Newland leave May only so long as May was childless; she could not let her cousin be an abandoned mother (which would be unheard of in New York society in the 1870s and would have deeply shamed all three of them forever).

Once Ellen was unwilling to run off with Newland, Newland was stuck with May.

Watched parts of it again on TCM last night. I like Pfeiffer's performance but I think she gets the physicality wrong. The way she walks is very modern. When she enters the dinner in her honor, she moves like Julia Roberts in heels.

"And Newland would never forgive himself for not doing the right thing nor would Ellen want him to. She loves him for being the proper gentleman that he is, however old-fashioned."

This brings up a question the movie sort of leaves me with - why DOES she love him? I guess I partly ask this because I find Day-Lewis's portrayal of him to be sort of bland, bloodless, and uncompelling. (I read the novel a long time ago, can't remember if I felt a similar question about the novel.)

Is it just because he's the only respectable man in New York who will associate with her, i.e. a lack of other options? Or is it sort of a Scarlett and Ashley thing, where he represents her nostalgic wistfulness for the way of life she grew up with?

He's brave, and she finds out he stands up for her by getting the van der Luydens on her side when Larry Lefferts tries to have her cut from society.

Also, he's not gross like most of the men who are after her (like Julius Beaufort) are, and doesn't treat her like a potential whore (like they do).

Also, it's implied she's carried a bit of a torch for him since childhood: "you kissed me behind a door."

And Newland announces his engagement to May at the Beaufort ball (one day after Ellen's return to NYC) as a show of support that he and his family "back" Ellen (as part of the Welland clan) in Society. His unconscious motivations are, of course, subject to interpretation, which is why, among many other reasons, the novel is one of the great modernist classics.

Newland cares about convention and his position. That's the source of conflict.

If Hamlet just said "Aw fuck it" and went back to school with Rosnekrantz and Guildenstern" he probably would have been better off. But the play would have been rather duller.

"Of COURSE it's a frustrating story. That's the whole point."

I know, I know, the whole point of the story is how much our fates turn on tiny moments, decisions that seem unimportant at the time. Which does make for a certain level of frustration with that decision, perhaps that's what Wharton intended.

And R120, if Newland had been a good attorney and helped his client get a divorce like she wanted, the situation you discuss need never have arisen. Why did he have to marry May when his heart (and other organs) wanted someone else? May didn't want that kind of marriage and told him so, but he insisted. Therefore I don't blame her for defending her own interest in a crisis, Newland was the one who created that situation, and it was only fair if he suffered for it.

[quote]And [R120], if Newland had been a good attorney and helped his client get a divorce like she wanted, the situation you discuss need never have arisen.

Newland was not a divorce attorney. He was a patents attorney.

wonderfully nuanced film......and a predictor of why/how the pendulum swung so far the other way.

Bump. A favorite. Just rewatched with a likeminded friend. We agreed, perfect movie. Special appreciation this time for Winona Ryder’s performance, superb.

Alexis Smith's last film.

I recall Joan Rivers raving about it on her daytime talk show.

Watching it was like being bludgeoned to death with a velvet truncheon.

R132 is anxiously awaiting the next "Fast and Furious" sequel.

It's on Criterion, and not ironically (the way Michael Bay movies are), so that pretty much canonizes it.

It's weird to see this threads again. the one poster just gets hysterical about Michelle Pfeiffer's hairdo, and when poster and poster gives evidence for why the hairdo was acceptable, he just doubles down and gets all the more freaked out.

I wish they hadn't had Pfeiffer wear red through the whole film. It's not a good color for her.

The scene where DDL kisses Michelle's glove in the carriage is supposed to be wild, intense passion but they had no chemistry.

Haven't seen it since it came out, but my impression was that Scorsese was overwhelmed by the desire to make an opulent costume drama while never really connecting with the material. It was 90% decor. And I never understood the praise for Winona's performance. She seemed as awkward and stiff as she always did when doing period. Pfeiffer came off better to me.

It probably had a much lower budget, but House of Mirth communicated the human drama of the story more effectively. That was a truly devastating, heartbreaking film.