The Age of Innocence (1993)

Scorsese on Charlie Rose

My original post was canceled for some reason.

I didn’t go to this film because I hate the smell of incense.

"Every character is so complex".....

Like, OMG, sign me up!

May tops from the bottom

She was a great writer, with this and The House of Mirth as the prime evidence.

Unpopular opinion: the movie is mediocre. I felt both Ryder and Pfeiffer were miscast.

R7 Please elucidate with evidence

R8, I watched the movie in 2006 so it's been a while. But I will say this--Ryder should not be in period pieces. Just look at Dracula! "Take me away from all this...death!". She's not a great actress.

Beautiful movie, one of my favorites. Surprisingly, Winona is my favorite player in it. She didn't try for some kind of faux semi-British accent but still came off as an aristocratic young American girl. And she effectively conveyed the steel underneath all that delicacy. She's especially good in that scene toward the end where she tells DDL how things are going to be.

[quote] My original post was canceled for some reason.

Well, why start a second one?

I agree. Everything about that movie was great. I watch it from time to time but watching it in a theater was a treat. The cinematography was stunning.

I'll have to watch it again. I saw it when it first came out and I remember hating it. Particularly Winona Ryder.

The production is beyond sumptuous. One of the most beIroful films to look at ever.

I don't think Ryder was miscast, she and May Welland and their limited range are a perfect match. I think it was ine of Ryder's best roles.

But I do think Pfeiffer was miscast. One problem is that she didn't even look natural in the period clothes. She couldn't even walk properly in the dresses.

Some actors just can't do period drama. Julia Roberts is another such.

The supporting cast was wonderful.

But whatever its flaws, the production values, from Elmer Bernstein's score to the clothes and interiors and photography, are almost drug-like to me.

One of those films I can always watch on a rainy or sleepless night.

^*beautiful (not belorful) films ever

[quote] I felt both Ryder and Pfeiffer were miscast.

I agree.

I'm a big Pfeiffer fan, but her acting style didn't work here. Ellen has lived abroad for a long time, moving in European circles, and when she comes home she should seem a bit foreign, out of step with her old world, which is more provincial than the one she left behind. But Pfeiffer is too American of actress to pull this off; she doesn't have the mysterious vibe that Ellen should have. The sun-bright hair doesn't help (Ellen of the book is a brunette). Stephen Frears was able to harness Pfeiffer's looser, more American style of acting and contrast it in an interesting way against the UK and theater-trained actors in Dangerous Liaisons, but Scorsese just lets her hang there.

Ryder has always gotten on my nerves, and she never works in pre-20th century roles for me - her vocal delivery is hopelessly modern. She's fine but I've never been able to escape the feeling that someone else could have done it better.

In the end, the film has a lot going for it but Scorsese takes the wrong lessons from Visconti and Merchant-Ivory here, and spends too much time focused on the props and the production design and not enough on his characters.

Winona was fresh and natural, which I liked. Michelle was fine, she was sexy at least. It all worked for me.

[quote] But I do think Pfeiffer was miscast. One problem is that she didn't even look natural in the period clothes. She couldn't even walk properly in the dresses.

In all fairness, those dresses back then were horrible to wear and walk in.

I think we have to give it to Joanne Woodward for her narration, very effective. That was a good choice, to go with a little narration.

I love Wharton and I love Scorsese but I couldn't stand this movie. You know who else was miscast (aside from Wyder who is excruciating)? The sainted Daniel Day-Lewis. His performance is so mannered and "tortured" in a post-1950s method-y way that is miles removed from Edith Wharton's world and her brilliant depiction of the charming, intelligent, but weak figure of Newland Archer.

I agree with a lot of the criticisms, but I still love this movie.

For me, it's a case of the whole being better than the sum of its parts.

I thought the casting was a little edgy but it worked, prevented the movie from becoming a stuffy period piece. It felt authentic enough.

The Charlie Rose interview is better than his norm, partly because it's difficult to interrupt Scorsese, but when he can, Rose is his usual horribleness.

The narration is essential because Ryder seems more wide eyed than subtle and more Iowa or California than NY. Pfeiffer isn't quite as miscast but she lacks a certain sophistication that the part needed. The supporting cast is much better and creates the mood for the film, along with teh attention to details with the sets, etc.

R20 I thought he worked well enough, but, again, they had to have a couple of marquee names at the top and that was undoubtedly a consideration.

Wharton purists objected heatedly to any narration and detested the film for that reason. I can see their point: if the script can't tell the story properly, why do it at all?

It was done as well as it could be, but I've always wondered what the film would have been like without the narration.

I thought the narration gave it a literary, sort of storytelling quality. Very appealing. It wasn’t overdone. And it conveyed some important things that those buttoned up characters couldn’t speak out loud.

The story (in the movie) felt hurried to me. For some reason I also find none of the characters compelling. They all make bad choices based on societal rules. Blah, blah, blah. But there is no redemption or true romance...the ending is so unsatisfactory. They just completely give up.

Is that what is meant by "ahead of her time"? A (too) realistic ending? Yeah, that's modern, but I'd rather have a faker more Hollywood ending to enjoy this story as a movie. I found it too depressing.

Much better to me are The Heiress (DeHaviland) and Tess (Natasha K). Notice those also have bad endings where the protagonist ends up with the wrong person or none at all. But they are much more interesting.

The narration is not effective. Corny, like the ending of an episode of Call The Midwife.

OP, the score is by Elmer Bernstein, and it's one of his best! I adore the opening sequence particularly because of the music....

Tess was a pretentious mess of a film. A critic's darling that was easy to hate. One critic called it "a multi-level mosaic motif" which is a phrase I use to describe any confusing pretentious mess of a film.

I was immediately drawn into Tess. AOI, only the set and costume were interesting. The plot feels very cliché and predictable. I felt like all three leads had zero chemistry.

I love this movie but I agree with much of the criticism of it on here. Certain scenes didn’t entirely work for me because I felt Scorsese leaned a bit too hard on the WASP society is as brutal as the mob angle. I also think because Scorsese isn’t an insider of that group certain subtleties were hard for him to convey. I could be wrong on that last point

Joanne Woodward was not the narrator, by Edith Wharton. I think the narration really helped the film. Think of the ball scene and image what it would be like without Woodward's voice.

Daniel Day-Lewis was perfect for Newland Archer. He got the trapped emotions down perfectly. I like to compare Newland Archer and Cecil Vyse from A Room with a View. Both are two men trapped by their society, one loves it (Vyse) and the other hated it (Archer). Day-Lewis pulled off both perfectly.

I like Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen. Pfeiffer acts different than every other cast member. She wears more color, is louder, is "American." Ellen is an alien to New York Society, remember. Pfeiffer's Ellen is misplaced, not miscast.

Winona Ryder is great as quiet, shy, and kind May. You forget she exists. You are supposed to forget May. Then, she comes in at the end and drops the hammer on Newland. Ryder does a great job at a nuisanced performance.

I concur with everyone on the supporting cast. Scorsese picked theater titans- Miriam Margoyles, Alec McCowen, Sian Phillips, Alexis Smith, Norman Lloyd, Geraldine Chaplin, and Michael Gough. They get it.

There weren't enough scenes to properly develop the characters or show the attraction developing. It felt very guy meets pretty lady, has secret affair, lady flees, guy marries first choice, has chance to meet her later, chickens out. Bing, bang, boom. I think it might have been better as a 4 part series.

"I like to compare Newland Archer and Cecil Vyse from A Room with a View. Both are two men trapped by their society, one loves it (Vyse) and the other hated it (Archer)."

I don't think Newland was trapped by society in any real sense, more trapped by his own choices. May gave him every possible chance to follow his heart, to back out of the upcoming marriage, and when he didn't take her up on her generous offer... well. She held him to the promises he'd made of his own free will.

And that's why IMHO Ryder works in the part, she did give the sense of a core of steel under all that white lace, and that's the single most important thing about her character. DDL was good as well, he seemed very American and fucked-up enough in a repressed, thoughtless, straight male way. Pfeiffer was the weak link for me, I mean she was very passionate, but she didn't seem at all European. She seemed thoroughly American, in spite of her little attempt at an accent, so all this talk of her being really a foreigner didn't really make sense in context. They ought to have cast some Brit, or even French.

Odd, because if there was ANY doubt or suspicion my man was in love with some countess, I would be so outta there.

I guess it really was an arranged marriage.

But was it really antique societal pressure? No, probably just the timeless human quality of living in denial.

I can't really sympathize with any of the characters, I find them annoying. Maybe because I make bad choices too?

The narration wasn't corny but rather old-fashioned, which fit the story well.

"Odd, because if there was ANY doubt or suspicion my man was in love with some countess, I would be so outta there."

Likewise, but I've never been told that finding a good husband is my one and only goal in life. Proper young ladies like her were absolutely desperate to get married in those days, because they had no alternatives but to be dependent on parents or brothers for the rest of their fucking lives, so they accepted any reasonable offer of marriage now matter how they felt about the man.

In fact it was very unusual for May to offer Newland the chance to back out of the engagement, at that time most girls who were in her position would have been pushing to get the marriage over and done with regardless of their personal feelings, the pressure to be married at all costs was that strong. May was willing to call it quits and start looking for a new prospect, she was willing to hold out for a marriage that was loving, or at least honest, so the decision to marry in spite of Ellen was 100% Newland's. So many people, straight and even gay, assume that being married will somehow change their feelings and make all their problems go away, and they're always wrong.

Ryder is so one dimensional. She seems to be sleepwalking with a smile. An actress with real subtlety could have done so much better. Pfeiffer isn't as bad---her attraction to Archer and her mix of mischief and naivety in confronting stuffy NY society are there, but she seems more California than continental.

[quote] Ryder is so one dimensional. She seems to be sleepwalking with a smile. An actress with real subtlety could have done so much better.

I disagree. Ryder shows how aware may is of what she's doing--and how much she controls what she lets people see--in the great archery sequence at Newport.

When she walks up to take her turn at the target, and no one else can see her face, Ryder's steely facial expression registers she knows she's the best archer of all the society girls at Newport, and she's absolutely going to win. But when she does exactly hit the bull's-eye, she gives a hilarious goofy smile to the onlookers, as if to say, "I can't believe I just hit that!," so as to disguise her competitiveness. Woodward tells us none of the other girls can be jealous of May's triumphs because her serenity makes it seem like she didn't really want to win--though we just saw on her face she did.

Julius Beaufort makes a snide comments to Larry Lefferts at that moment that "That's the only kind of target she'll ever hit," suggesting May's archery in comparable to her ability to get a man--but of course he's wrong. She is fully able to compete with Ellen for Newland--and of course May eventually outmaneuvers both Newland and Ellen entirely.

(I love Bernstein's purposefully insipid waltz music during this sequence, and the gorgeous cream and beige costumes.)

Martin reversed how the woman are described in the book, physically. Mary is blonde, Wasp.. Ellen, the eccentric European educated cousin is swarthy, curly dark hair, almost gypsy like I felt. When I read the book I felt it was a bit of a cheap throw away, sort of a lazy stereotype. Liked them better the way Martin did it.

Love the film, it is a visual treat for the eye. Feel like the actors are bit players, the visuals are the real stars. All hail those who worship Hitchcock.

The emphasis on the objects in the film someone complained of above is fully intentional--Wharton treats the old Knickerbocker society almost as if she were an anthropologist, emphasizing the beautiful things they own to show just how materialistic and obsessed with luxury they are.

I actually think the loving close-ups Scorsese provides of the expensive dishes at the van der Luydens' big dinner party for Ellen, and of Newland's and May's wedding gifts, are very much in keeping with the tone of the source material. These are people who can only express things through what they own because they're so emotionally repressed.

[quote] Martin reversed how the woman are described in the book, physically. Mary is blonde, Wasp.. Ellen, the eccentric European educated cousin is swarthy, curly dark hair, almost gypsy like I felt.

According to Scorsese, the reversed casting was an homage to Doctor Zhivago - so Ellen is the Lara of this film, May is the Tonya, hence the casting of Chaplin as Ryder's Mother.

[quote] "But whatever its flaws, the production values, from Elmer Bernstein's score to the clothes and interiors and photography, are almost drug-like to me."

It's so thorough & well-done, the production & costume design are practically characters themselves. Costume designer Gabriella Pescucci won the Oscar for her work, & the film was also nominated for Best Art Direction

One thing I also love about the archery sequence is the composition of the first two shots:

In the first two shots, the spectators are all pointed towards the camera, but movement is provided first by a wealthy woman spectator who walks horizontally across the camera from right to left, which is then matched in the second shot by a waiter moving in the same direction--May's walking forward with her steely expression in the second shot towards the camera breaks that line of movement and the conformity of everyone else in the archery contest audience (although she is dressed in the same colors as all of the spectators are, showing she is fitting in, but secretly moving in her own direction).

[quote] These are people who can only express things through what they own because they're so emotionally repressed.

Douglas Sirk did something similar in imitation of Life.

I always wondered of Poor Archer had access to any pretty boys he could enjoy. Being married to Ma..., May so well named. She seemed to me like she had a May pole stuck up her ass. If there was ever a wife who could make a man..'Go to the Dark Side', it would be May.

The character of May needs to seem a bit insipid. But of course she’s really not. And her true mettle is revealed near the end, and then decisively at the very end. Winona was perfect.

May was a typical, entitled WASP cunt. The swindler bad guy Beaufort saw her for exactly who she was. Insipid, tiresome, selfish bitch. Its' all about what she wanted. Everyone else be damned. Happy, fulfilled, loved? Now why would anyone want that?

Loved at the end her darling son married Beaufort's bastard. Hahahaha May. Beaufort got your number & got you in the end. Any grandkids will be part Beaufort. And from a Beaufort born on the wrong side of then blanket.

What did Count Oleska do that was so shocking and meriting of a being kicked to the curb divorce? Askin' for a friend...

"Oh if you and May could come!"

The book is peerless; the movie is a good time.

Michael Gough and Alexis Smith as Mr. and Mrs. Henry van Luyden were the best characters.

[quote] According to Scorsese, the reversed casting was an homage to Doctor Zhivago

Almost everything in Scorsese is an homage to something else.

I think in the long run people will appreciate Scorsese's "off brand" movies more. Age of Innocence, King of Comedy, Last Temptation of Christ. They're just as good as Taxi Driver and definitely as good or better than Raging Bull.

[quote] Scorsese's "off brand" movies

I'm not American nor a fan of Scorsese. But you Americans should know that Scorsese has admitted that all his "off brand movies" are homages to someone else.

Age of Innocence ; homage to Wyler's 'Heiress'. Last Temptation of Christ; homage to Pasolini. New York, New York; homage to Vincente Minnelli. After Hours; homage to Screwballs. Shutter Island; homage to Bruckheimer. Cape Fear; homage to the earlier movie.

I think he also mentioned David Lean AND Michael Powell.

Maybe I'm making this up but I'm sure they only added the narration after test audiences were left confused by plot and needed someone to spell out the subtleties.

I saw it back in the day and loved it. Wish I'd seen it in the cinema to appreciate the beauty, but it was perfectly cast.

For those complaining about miscasting who would have been better in the Pfeiffer and Ryder roles?

They should remake it for Netflix

Henry Cavill *IS* Newland Archer

Anne Hathaway *IS* Ellen Olenska

Zendaya *IS* May Welland

Laura Linney *IS* Mrs. Welland

Laverne Cox *IS* Mrs. Mingott

Elliot Page *IS* Ted Archer

Helena Bonham Carter *IS* as Mrs. Archer

Not a fan of Winona Ryder in general but she was perfection in this film. A Steel Magnolia in New York. The whole thing was a gem of a film and Scorsese did a wonderful job. Of course Daniel Day Lewis held the whole thing together and was brilliant. I might have cast someone other than Pfeiffer but she's not terrible at all.

I've always appreciated just how much Martin Scorsese truly loves the movies and especially the movies of others. He's still probably the best director we have produced in America since the old days.

But, R55, you seem to have forgotten that all current movies are supposed to have a quota casting of 20% African-Americans playing wealthy members of New York's 1870s elite.

Shut the fuck up, R57, you're whining and pathetic attempts at cleverness are so dull.

Try some new tricks, dear, perhaps you'll get less of a beating here. Oh wait, maybe that's what you come here for, you sly masochist. Carry on.

" Beaufort saw her for exactly who she was. Insipid, tiresome, selfish bitch. Its' all about what she wanted. Everyone else be damned. "

If she's so devouringly selfish, R48, why did she tell Newland that they could break off the engagement, if he didn't really want to marry her, for any reasons?

Believe me, most girls of her time and place would NOT have done that.

R21 for the win. Exactly so.

R38 That's where I disagree with so many posters, who miss the point. May's apparent lack of intellectual sophistication hid a backbone of steel and the ability to outwit the ever so cultured and more sophisticated Countess Olenska.

May lies about when she absolutely knew she was pregnant to Ellen, knowing full well that Ellen would never push Newland into deserting not only his wife, but his child.

Those last scenes in the film, as Newland looks around the dinner table and realises that he is "a prisoner in the middle of an armed camp" and that "his wife is one of the plotters" who have engineered his separation from the Countess, and the scene afterward in the library when May tells Newland she is expecting (and admits to having told Ellen the same before the doctors confirmed it), exposes that May is perhaps shallow, but hardly stupid.

May is the winner in this contest of emotions. Newland, dismal as it seems, does the only thing he can do: honour his marital vows and his duties as a father.

I don't think the ending is at all pointless. It confirms that Newland couldn't quite break his ties with his background and culture to the extent that would have been necessary to join his life to Ellen's.

The last lines of narrative, as Newland realises that his wife understood what had been going on inside him, and appreciated the sacrifice he made on behalf of her and their children, and the knowledge removing iron bands from around his heart, make his last gesture toward the decision he made quite logical in terms of character.

"Tell her I'm old-fashioned. She'll understand."

And it's this sort of thing that made Wharton great as an author.

Henry James in Portrait of A Lady also explored the impact of character on choices of mates.

Thomas Hardy also explored it. So did Galsworthy. So did Tolstoy in Anna Karenina.

It's a very late 19th century theme.

So many actors in these period dramas act so affected and they speak in such stilted tones. It’s as if they’re just playing at something instead of acting. I’m a big fan of Edith Wharton and I felt this movie was one of the worst in that respect.

Newland Archer. May is expert at archery. Duh, I just picked up on that.

Did Newland and the Countess ever shtup or at least do some heavy petting? Is that what the carriage ride is meant to suggest? Or is Newland forever tortured by frustrated passion?

If those two crazy kids had run off together, the relationship probably would have gone south very quickly. Newland could never have returned to polite society. He would have become a sort of outcast Bohemian, traveling the world. Olenska would have found some other disreputable older rich guy.

R61, you're post convinces me that a rewatch of the movie might be necessary

R63 - This is why the theme is so prevalent in the mid-late 19th century. The price paid for defiance of social norms is so high that it destroys the thing itself. Look what happens to Anna, to Young Jolyon before his father forgives him for running off with the governess, to Irene Forsyte until much later in the novel when she and Young Jolyon get together . . . years of social ostracism . . .

In fact, Romeo and Juliet, always held up as a play about True Love, is also a treatise on what happens when people in privileged classes defy the social order, in this case by crushing the two lovers. Romeo is 17, and by the standards of the day, a grown man who should know better; Juliet hasn't a leg to stand on, legally and in line with the custom of the day, in defying her father in the issue of marriage.

Far from the Madding Crowd's heroine, aptly named Bathsheba, also has to come to some sort of mature ability to turn away from the charismatic rogue to the solid farmer who is her natural partner in their social structure.

And, come to it, isn't Austen full of this same exploration?

I think Wharton is really Austen's heir, literarily, in this particular arena, only in my view Wharton was a far better writer who drilled down deeper.

Doesn't Lily Bart come to grief because she can't accept Lawrence Selden as a destiny, despite the fact they love each other, because she wants enormous wealth? She admits, herself, that when first "out" she missed some "chances".

It's an old theme that's basically been rendered moot by the modern era, but it's fascinating to return to literarily.

R61: The character may be steely, but Ryder is not and we need the narration to explain that. If Ryder hadhad a little more skill, it wouldn't have been necessary.

I can’t put my finger on it but some about Daniel Day Lewis in this movie 🎥 was

HOMOSEXUAL

To be honest I found the film as dry as dust.

I always enjoyed Alec McCowen as Sterlington Jackson. He was the homosexual.

"Those last scenes in the film, as Newland looks around the dinner table and realises that he is "a prisoner in the middle of an armed camp" and that "his wife is one of the plotters""

Except that his wife was the one who told him he didn't have to enter the "prison", she offered him the chance to exchange polite goodbyes at the prison door, and when they entered it was by his choice.

Tell me, did that happen in the novel? And if it did, was the offer to break the engagement as simple as it seemed in the movie? Because it did seem simple in the movie, although I know that in much of the 19th century US, breaking an engagement was considered scandalous or dishonorable.

[quote]Doesn't Lily Bart come to grief because she can't accept Lawrence Selden as a destiny, despite the fact they love each other, because she wants enormous wealth?

Did he ever propose to her? I don't remember that.

[quote] I don't remember that.

The movie was 29 years ago. I have only half-memories of it and I won't be reading the book.

[quote] I always enjoyed Alec McCowen as Sterlington Jackson.

Apparently not enough to realize his character's first name was Sillerton.

[quote] The movie was 29 years ago. I have only half-memories of it and I won't be reading the book.

Then please don't post.

No. It never came to a direct proposal, but it didn't need to. Lily makes clear to Selden in the earliest pages of the book that she is only interested in husbands who can support her exquisite taste. "I cost a great deal of money," I believe she says to him during their chance meeting in Grand Central Station that opens the book.

Selden, ironic and urbane, understands Lily perfectly. He is Liliy s real "missed chance". She has been too deeply marked by her mother's shallow grasping worship of wealth, and the impact on her from her childhood of her father losing his fortune.

None of the films made of The House of Mirth do its subtle ironies and observations justice, in my view

Remember, it's not just a matter of Lily rejecting Selden. He can't marry Lily either. She's not rich enough, and he needs a wife with money. They love each other but both are too weak to overcome the conventions of society, and the pleasures of the upper class life they've become accustomed to, even though they make these strained and ambivalent attempts to do so because they are in love.

R76 - Selden's position vis-a-vis a wife are never clearly articulated. He actually seems reasonably content with his independent life, and the affair he is engaged in as the book opens is with one of the other guests for the weekend that both she and Selden are heading off to when they meet as the books opens, Mrs Dorset, who is hardly a marriageable prospect. In fact, it is Lily's dalliance with Selden that weekend, drawing him away from Mrs Dorset, is what sets up her eventual betrayal by Mrs Dorset, and puts paid to her scheme to catch the very rich but very dull Percy Gryce.

Those first chapters expose, very neatly, Lily's conflict between the two sides of her nature: the one craving a beautiful life supported by great wealth, and the craving for love that represents the better part of her nature.

In the end, neither side wins.

But Selden may be scathed but he is not ruined as Lily is.

Wharton said that one of the great cards she had when she wrote House of Mirth was that NY society of the 1890s hadn't yet been fully explored by novelists, so she was, as they might have said then, in advance of the fashion. HOM was serialised at first, it was a tremendous success, particularly with women, who were devastated when the ending was published.

But in both HOM and AOI, the woman who loves not wisely but too well ends up with less. It is the smug society matrons like May Welland, Judy Trenor, and Mrs George Dorset who end up sailing on with exactly what they want.

Interesting how Mary, Judy & Mrs. Dorset settle for stuff instead of being the first choice of their loved one. Being the sloppy second. That must take a lot of work. I guess denial can run that deep.

Wharton describes May as going to her death thinking all families were nice & happy like hers. The snark is there. The daughter marries the most boring & safe son of another society family. Repeating the same mistake, hoping for a different result. The darling son is a rebel in his profession & love life. He marries the rebellious Beaufort bastard. He also looks down on his father as the pathetic, emasculated dinosaur he is, who doesn't even have the balls to go & see Ellen. The son rejects him & goes up to Ellen who is portrayed as the glistening light. Newland still chooses to live in the darkness imposed upon him by May. Small wonder the son rejects his life & mores.

Ahead of her time?

How quaint.

Daniel Day Lewis has no sex appeal whatsoever. I feel like Meryl Streep would have been a better choice for Ellen, although perhaps she was considered too old by that point, 30 something women at that time did look older.

Streep would have been a bit old for the part, although her "technical" approach to acting may have been an asset for the part.

r81 Streep played a younger woman in House of the Spirits which came out in the same year.

Following their description in the books, back in 1992, 22 yo Uma Thurman as May and Gina McKee (28) as Ellen (who's supposed to be "nearly thirty") would have worked just fine.

Streep would have been 43-44 when the film was made and released, a bit old for the role, and IMHO not passionate enough.

I don't think they could have done a lot better than Pfeiffer, she was the right age, and is one of the few who is both very beautiful and very talented. It's a pity they had to give her that awful wig, nobody looks good in a blondfro!

I really like the Scorsese Age of Innocence, but I like the Terence Davies House of Mirth more. I think Davies "got" Wharton a little better; he was better aligned with her temperament. Her anger, especially...at a world she knew so well. Davies has a strong feeling for the persecuted, the outsider; it permeates virtually everything he's done, whether autobiography (those lonely, picked-on gay boys), adaptation, documentary. He was hopelessly out of his element with the American South in his one prior literary film, The Neon Bible (1995), but right at home in decorous, discreetly savage turn-of-the-century New York. And that transition from Aunt Julia's empty house to Monte Carlo, with the Mozart trio on the soundtrack, is stunning cinema. He had a fraction of Scorsese's budget, but he got a lot out of it.

There are good points made here against Scorsese's film, but they just don't count for much with me when I watch it. I've always enjoyed it. And I don't agree that Day-Lewis has no sex appeal. I first saw him in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and I found him a magnetic Tomas. He's cerebral sexy.

Annette Bening as Olenska would have been awesome.

I wouldn't change a thing, what can I say. Magical movie.

I adore this film. The Night of the Ball and the Vanderlyden dinner scene, where a Lesson is taught, are two of my favorite films scenes of all time.

It was great to see Scorsese go out of his comfort zone with working class Italian men and do something really high class and elegant about old New York. Barbra Streisand should have directed a period movie in that time too. I would have loved her to do Daniel Deronda, the George Eliot novel about the English gent who discovers his mother is Jewish, and tracks her down to Italy. Barbra could have played that part. And there's a great bitch-heroine lead role in that called Gwendolen Harleth.

One quality of Michelle's that was good for the part was her vulnerability, the look of someone who's been hurt. Bening doesn't have that.

I love Pfeiffer in this role. She has one bad scene where she's reading out loud a letter she's written to Newland directly to the camera, but she's otherwise quite fine. I love her in the opening scene at the opera.

R86 Not pretty enough, and too hard. What Ellen has that so drew Newland was charm, and that Pfieffer supplied, whatever her other lacks.

The thing about Wharton and this was true of Galsworthy in The Forsyte Saga and Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, is that although they had a viewpoint as authors, they didn't let those cloud a certain objectivity in presenting their characters. They let the characters speak for themselves.

I don't sense "anger" coming from Wharton: I sense a realistic depiction of what she saw.

I like Davies' work, but I think he lacks the "objectivity", or "distance", call it what you like, from his characters that allows them to take on something besides being the creator's sociopolitical mouthpiece.

He often stacks the decks too high on either side, something I found particularly irksome in The Deep Blue Sea, despite the stellar cast.

Even Soames Forsyte, Anna's husband, and Newland Archer clearly receive some humanity from the author, or understanding, if you will, that perhaps isn't apparent in film and television reworkings.

Anyway, just my view.

Very much enjoying the conversation, even if I have very little to add. Thanks.

A friend who worked on this film pointed out a few things.

--In the book, the Countess is exotic and dark and May, the familiar home girl is blond. Wharton was a WASP. In the film, because Scorsese is italian, it is the blond who is exotic and the familiar home girl is dark.

--You will notice that Pfieffer gets a lot of long takes, because she is an actress who can sustain a scene. Ryder gets a lot of quicker cuts because her performance had to be put together in editing. A whole major sequence with May at an archery tournament had to be reduced to mere seconds because Ryder could not stand straight with the bow, let alone act the scene.

--Paintings are used throughout the film to define character. The art on the walls of each home were carefully chosen to reveal the character of the owner.

A lot of good comments on this thread about this movie, though the movie looks really dated. You can just look at that picture of DDL & Michelle & think "it was the 90s." A movie like that should have a timelessness about it, like Dr. Zhivago.

R8 evidence? It's an opinion that I happen to share with R7 and others and yes, the reviews were generally favorable

'a bore' -Austin Chronicle

'A noble failure' -Chicago Reader

' Winona Ryder is disastrously miscast' -The New Republic

How many threads on this do we need.

R95, Dr. Zhivago completely looks 1960s. Hardly a good example of timelessness.

How does it look 90s? The 90s didn't really look like anything.

Hairstyles and eye makeup always give it away.

The only time I remember designers really allowing the period to speak was in The Heiress with Cherry Jones with her weird ear-exposing hair style. But the character was supposed to be ungainly.

And significantly, it is hard to find a photo that really shows the style. Most have her turned to minimize it, or with John Tenney's hand covering the ear..

R95 Are you joking? Julie Christie's hair and makeup were practically Carnaby Street 1965. She looked no different than she did in DARLING.

[quote] Julie Christie's hair and makeup

She copied the Just-Raped Brigitte Bardot look. It displayed her as Lara being 'a slut'.

Yes, I find that almost any historical film recreates a distant period with some of the fashions and inclinations of the present day superimposed over it. Years go by and when you look at these movies again, or belatedly discover them, you're aware of seeing two periods at once. If you tune in in the middle, you have an idea of when it was made, even if you don't recognize famous actors at a particular time in their lives.

I like that, though.

Again, can someone tell me how it looks 90s?

[quote]Julie Christie's hair and makeup

"Oh, Haven, come on. She can't even comb her hair!"

R104, the rhinoplasties of the American actresses.

Such an exquisite film. My favorite Scorsese.

Listening to the soundtrack right now. One of my favorites.

[quote] My favorite Scorsese

It was untypical Scorsese.

Scorsese has been pretty diverse over 55 years. Putting aside the documentaries, people could describe any of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, New York New York, After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Age of Innocence, Kundun, The Aviator, Hugo, and Silence as atypical for him. They're not about the criminal underworld or dynamics among Italian-American men (and their women); they don't have a particular kind of violence. But those titles cover quite a lot of his output. His new one sounds as though it'll go on that list too.

To some people, he's the guy who usually makes mob movies, but I only count five. Six, if we let Gangs of New York in.

[quote] people could describe any of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, New York New York, After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Age of Innocence, Kundun, The Aviator, Hugo, and Silence as atypical for him.

R110 You obviously didn't see Scorsese's interview mentioned in R54.

Scorsese calls them 'homages' while others would call them 'pastiches'.

Merchant Ivory would have done it better

Merchant Ivory's movie would have been gorgeous but maybe colder. Scorsese's is suitably heartbreaking.

It's NYC! Not England. Scorsese is THE NYC filmmaker of our time. (Woody bores some, and Spike alienates some.)

Victorian beauties all had double chins and heavier measurements. You can tell Pfeiffer and Ryder are 90s women. James Cameron at least got the beauty ideal of the period right when he cast Kate Winslet in Titanic.

But didn’t he call her fat?

R114 Only three filmmakers really "get" NYC- Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese.

r116 Victorian and Edwardian beauties WERE fat by today's standards.

What’s the point of hiring someone because she fits that time period’s ideal and then put her down for being fat?

Scorsese should have directed Rent

I just rewatched the film.

The ball scene is spectacular. Joanne Woodward's narration and the music of Strauss are absolutely wonderful. This is where the characters come off the page and onto the screen.

I love how the attention to detail included having the FAUST excerpt(s) at the opera sung in Italian, as they would have been at that place and time. It would have been easy to use existing recordings in French, but Scorsese didn't settle for that.

Such an exquisite film

Scorsese needs to direct another classic literary adaptation, maybe Dickens.

[quote]R7 Unpopular opinion: the movie is mediocre. I felt both Ryder and Pfeiffer were miscast.

It’s deadly boring, and Daniel Day Lewis’ character is a lifeless wimp.

R125- His character of Newland Archer with his exquisite manners and perfect diction seem quite HOMOSEXUAL.

A closeted homosexual from that era would be infinitely more interesting to watch.

I was recently reading that Wharton’s male characters wasn’t her strong suit. I guess Archer is an example of that.

^^ I will say her grammar’s a bit better than mine.

OP, Woody Allen is triggered by this post.

Several Scorsese scholars and film scholars have pointed out intelligently how much "The Age of innocence" fits in with the rest of Scorsese's oeuvre, as has indeed the man himself. This is a very anthropological study (as many of his films are) of gangs in the New York City area--the difference here is that "gangs" are not the Mafia, but cliques of wealthy socialites.

There's a scene in the film where Ellen Olenska mounts the staircase of the van der Luydens' house for the special dinner in her honor (which is explicitly intended to "teach a lesson" to Larry Lefferts and all the other lesser socialites who had snubbed her, since the van der Luydens' decisions are considered unimpeachable in 1880s NYC society), and the van der Luydens have placed all their footmen (and clearly have hired extras as well for the occasion) on the stairs for the guests' arrival. Scorsese pointed out that in those days the footmen at these events were more-or-less like the "muscle" that today's gang bosses would display to other gang bosses at big get-togethers to intimidate them.

And when Mrs. Manson Mingott snarlingly refuses to help her niece Regina Beaufort monetarily over her husband Julius's financial disaster because of "honor," it's very much like a gang boss refusing to help out a lesser capo in his organization also because of "honor" (but defined differently) in Scorsese's mob films.

I wish he'd directed The Alienist. He must have been offered the opportunity.

Classy and elegant

[quote]R130 There's a scene in the film where Ellen Olenska mounts the staircase of the van der Luydens' house…

Zzzzzzz.

Marian Margolyes claimed she was snubbed of an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress

And it was all Winona Ryder’s fault

She's always the victim

I didn’t love the book.

So sue me.

I want to speak to Miriam. It's her problem too.

Yes, I can see where having to notice and think about what you watched might put [italic]you[/italic] right to sleep, r133.

Meh. This film bored me as much as The Portrait of a Lady did, three years later.

^^Then why are you on this thread??

"Only boring people are bored." -- Betty Draper

r124 Scorsese was considering doing a movie version of Middlemarch by George Eliot but because the book has multiple plots and characters, it would suit the miniseries format better.

Winona Ryder was a weak link in the film. The supporting cast were all very good.

R141- That was a quote Betty Draper got from her mother.

My favorite scene is towards the end at Archer and May's inaugural dinner party when Archer realizes the entire party are conspirators in the affair. It is played so well because he figures it out while the guests are all acting like nothing is wrong. The only spoken words are Joanne Woodward's impeccable narration.

I was prepared to hate Miriam Margolyes in that clip but she was quite delightful.

thanks to this thread, I've re-watched the movie. It was a cult of mine in the 90's; I knew the lines by heart. I stalked DDL for weeks until I could tell him he was my fav (ironically I hate him now). At first I was disappointed, I thought it was very lightweight and vapid, but I was intrigued by the technical aspects that I was once too young to appreciate, so I kept re-watching. It's a MASTERPIECE indeed. Scorsese uses screens, smokes and mirrors to tell us excactly how corrupted America is in a way that was not understood at the time, just by telling us ...well...nothing. the extraordinary fetish about food, silver, china, etc that was so criticized at the time, is of a religious nature. Nothing is really what it seems, even the mattes that I found so distracting are there on purpose .That society is so empty spiritually that it's moral compas is in the material possessions and ritualistic social events. Total greed rules; THE CAST IS EXTRAORDINARY. Ryder is in a state of grace, Day-lewis and pfeiffer are miscast but divine. Pdeiffer as countess Olenska in a conundrum. too foxy to be believable as a woman crushed by conventions, she never seems to be really in Love with Archer, rather she tries to play that card to avoid the pitfalls the central character in house of myrth, but you feel that as played by Pfeiffer, she could easily get away with an affair. I don't think she ever been better, but unfortunately, she's too toned, too skinny, too nipped and tucked to work in that era. and tha age gap between her and May is wrong. Paltrow could have been cast. the old version is unwatchable. Irenne Dunne EWWW, Oh ,and I want Beaufort quite deep inside me

Glossy soap opera with dialogue to match

Received mostly strong reviews but I agree with Variety

I much prefer William Wyler's masterpiece The Heiress (1949) Scorsese and Jay Cocks are fans. It's complex, intense and compellingly ambiguous.

Wyler's mastery of the psychological nuances can have you drawing deep breaths. It's a peerless super-controlled movie. Oliva de Haviland does her finest wok ever -Pauline Kael

I always thought it was Wharton saying, the North may have won the Civil War, but lost their souls during the Reconstruction. Much of the great wealth shown in TAOI is due to the rape of the South during The Reconstruction.

The ball scene is so eerie. All the rich NYers seem like living Ghouls. No passion, no ability to enjoy art or beauty. Hollow Ghouls. May seemed the poster child for this. Nobody home. Unable to feel or love. Only able to control. Archer like a pathetic ghost, a mere shadow of a man, even at the end in Paris long after May's death. Unable to even go upstairs to join his son at Olenska's. As granny would say. An empty suit.

I loved the film, found it full of passion and emotion, suppressed and restrained. Romantic and heartbreaking.

R151 they all had passion and a heart, but they could not show it. They did lose their souls.

R153 I dunno, in the end May and Archer did create a nice family and he seemed genuinely fulfilled in that, to some large extent anyway. As has been noted, running off with Olenska likely would have ended in tears.

^ Nice family??? The daughter marries an even more dead version of her father, the dullest son of one of the other lawyers. The lawyers of The Reconstructiion were the vultures who stripped the last bits of flesh from the South. Those Northern lawyers laid the foundation for what a greedy, depraved profession it is today.

The artsy son who gets him to spring for the tickets to Europe busts all his balloons about May & his life while mocking him at the same time. Wonder if Archer was even able to realize he was & had always just been always been Just, A Dead Man Walking?

Her books are always better than the movies. Ethan Fromme was great.

Reconstruction should have crushed those greedy proto-fascist slaveowners. The North prospered because it industrialized and because of investment in the West via railroads. Whatever contribution Reconstruction made was of minor importance.

I wonder what Sarlett would have thought of countess Olenska

Kate Winslet was not fat in Titanic. Only some crazy Hollywood weirdo into stick insects would say that.

[quote] Kate Winslet was not fat in Titanic

hum, bitch, she WAS

Merchant-Ivory did the Golden Bowl - which was a bomb - I wish you could watch it online.

I disagree R60. She had curves but nowhere did I see rolls of fat. She had a waistline.

Kate Winslet was gorgeous and womanly, and it's horrible how the heroin chic trending media treated her. Winona Ryder wasn't a stick either, she dressed in loose fitting clothes most of the time. She has ample curves for a petite chick - a similar figure to Halle Berry, but was never marketed in the same fashion.

R161 I liked the Golden Bowl. It was an ambitious attempt at an unadaptable book.

"Reconstruction should have crushed those greedy proto-fascist slaveowners."

I agree, the slave-owners class deserved FAR worse than they got. Were any of them ever jailed or hanged for the crimes they committed, of holding other human beings in bondage and beating, raping them, mutilating, or even killing them if they couldn't or wouldn't work without pay?

So shut the fuck up about the evils of Reconstruction, Reconstruction Troll, your vile ancestors got off easy.

{quote] That was a quote Betty Draper got from her mother.

Yes, and we heard her repeat it to Bobby.

R155, none of those family dynamics came through in the movie. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but what I remember is that Archer's later life seemed agreeable enough, with a fond relationship with May and kids who turned out okay.

Fuck the Reconstruction Troll!

R167 and one of his children married Lawrence Leffort's children

[quote] May was a typical, entitled WASP cunt.

Block and F&F the racist.

[quote]R139 Yes, I can see where having to notice and think about what you watched might put you right to sleep

THINK? This is not an involved plot. If anything, it’s overly simplistic.

Mr. Scorsese kept trying to claim in interviews it was his most violent film (emotionally) but no one bought it.

[quote] tour de force

I despise this phrase.

Oh, is that another thread?

Edith Wharton is a less than average author.

I'm petty enough that I hated the movie because of the way Winona Ryder pronounced "Newland"

Everytime she said his name was like nails on a chalkboard.

Yes Daniel Day-Lewis is insufferable, he's so beyond precious. I phucking hate this movie. Michelle Pfeiffer does her damaged damsel routine and lets her big eyes and hair do most of the acting. Ryder can be brilliant or a huge bust.

Winslet in that dreadful Holiday movie dieted down to resemble all the other swizel sticks, and they stuck her in horrible clothes to show it off. She looks better curvy.

I actually liked Ryder the best of the main cast. She seemed perfectly believable as that character. Pfeiffer was too frail and languid to give much emotional charge at all, while Tommy Lee Jones was just a cold, insufferable prig.

Tommy Lee Jones?

I get sick of Daniel Day Lewis’ affected 3 names.

A lot of actors who bill themselves with three names do it because there's already another actor named "Daniel Lewis" or "Thomas Jones" on the SAG books.

Great score

[quote]R180 A lot of actors who bill themselves with three names do it because there's already another actor named "Daniel Lewis" or "Thomas Jones" on the SAG books.

Thank you for pointing that out.

DDL’s character in this is so weak and annoying, such a complete drag, that I’ve unfortunately never stopped picking on him.

The novel has a ... tricky ending.

I went through a Last of the Mohicans stage where I was all about DDL. My brother said that he was "too righteous."

Incidentally, I first came across the DL when looking up whether or not DDL was supposed to be gay in The Phantom Thread. I hadn't seen it but it didn't make sense that he would be straight. Then I found a thread here where someone posted a picture of DDL next to a picture of Jennifer Connoly. And I was home.

It should have won the oscar for Best Art Direction.

I dont find any of the main characters sympathetic

or interesting or original or complex . . . R186

What about Return to Innocence? 🎵

R186, I find Ellen and May pretty sympathetic.

As a woman in an abusive marriage, Ellen has damn few options, none of them good, but she's trying like hell to escape abuse and make a better life for herself in an society that expects her to just accept the beatin' and cheatin'. And like I said above, very few young ladies would have done what May did, and allowed Archer to back out of their engagement with no drama, most girls would have been out to marry at any cost and would have kept the claws in. And if Archer didn't have the sense to accept her generous offer, well. From then on she was within her rights.

Such an exquisite film. I buy yellow roses now since I saw the movie almost 30 years ago

Did anyone serve Newland Archer some fresh-picked mushrooms at the infamous dinner party?

Why are there so many lovingly filmed supercuts of plates of food!

R191 I have a cook, I don't prepare meals like the rough-hewn peasant girl you're referring to.

R192 To emphasise the astonishing lifestyle of the upper classes in late 19th century New York, just as, at the beginning, the camera moves over the jewellery of the women in the opera house . . .

Olenska is a passive aggressive bitch, she badmouthes everyone who's being nice to her, especially the poor Van der luyden, she's a bitch to May, she's just a terrible person. Newland Archer is a homosexual faggot as played by DDL. Ryder deserved the oscar.

Scorsese features food in most of his films.