The Age of Innocence (PG.)
Directed by Martin Scorsese. 1993.
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Miriam Margolyes, Richard E. Grant, Alec McCowen, Geraldine Chaplin, Mary Beth Hurt, Stuart Wilson, Michael Gough and Joanne Woodward. 138 mins. Released on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection.
In the ranks of Martin Scorsese films that slip your mind, this 90s costume drama, an adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel, doesn't have the obscurity of Bringing Out The Dead or Kundun. But, if we rule out shorts, documentaries and anything pre Mean Streets, I reckon it would be a toss-up between this and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for the position of third most forgotten Scorsese feature. Post-Goodfella, the 90s would be a strange period for Scorsese, a time of wandering and exploration as he was winding down his partnership with De Niro (they would make Cape Fear and Casino either side of this) and had yet to team up with DiCaprio.
At the time, Age of Innocence was seen as one of his more mechanical efforts, a chance to rifle through his encyclopedic knowledge of films and mimic shots from various favourites such as Powell/ Pressburger, Visconti, Welles, etc. Starting with a title sequence made by Saul and Elaine Bass, it is technically immaculate. But then you could say that of all Scorsese films. Seeing it again after a quarter of a century is to realise what a fantastic adaptation it is and that it is one of his finest films, perhaps the best of the non-De Niro one.
If Scorsese's style is a pastiche of old movies, it is appropriate because the film is documenting a pastiche society. Upper-class New York in 1870s is a small little world based rigidly on the laws and rituals of British society. But like a fundamentalist sect, they've taken the strictures to absurd lengths. Normally the costumes are the chief instruments of oppression in costume dramas, showing how rigid the society is but Scorsese's visual design fetishes the flowers and the meals, his camera lingering over each immaculate dinner course, moving in on the various bunches of flowers. In this world the newly returned Madame Odenska (Pfeiffer) is a figure of scandal, having walked out on an unhappy marriage to a Polish count and returned to New York. Newland Archer (Day-Lewis) is engaged to her young cousin May (Ryder) and as a lawyer is entrusted with the task of persuading her not to get a divorce for fear of the scandal that it will bring on the family.
One of the film's many intrigues is that it a Director's Film of what would normally be an Actors Film. Scorsese's approach is less kinetic and the camera movement more restrained than on something like Raging Bull but there is still plenty to busy the eye. Scorsese uses iris shots and fades to red, yellow and white to make sure we know he's in charge. But the subject matter is restraint, a society where points are made subtly and rebukes are minimalist. The thespian classes love this kind of subtlety and the chance to be discretely waspish. It's like a Merchant/ Ivory production that has been airlifted overseas to entertain the natives with half of Equity there doing what they do best: sitting or standing erect, clipping their delivery and seeming very pleased with themselves.
In the middle of it all are three exceptional performances. Ryder's May is a figure of decoration and banality; she's shallow but her shallowness goes down a long way and Ryder gets across her dogged commitment to superficiality. Pfeiffer has a real talent for playing women that make men want to rescue. It works for the film that she is the performer that seems the least period, the least at home in the costumes.
And then there's Day-Lewis who, then as now, is the consummate screen actor. He made half his name in a Merchant/ Ivory film (A Room With a View, half of a mid-eighties double whammy with My Beautiful Launderette) and you feel that Scorsese needs him to anchor the piece. DD-L is all actor, every move seems thought out, but that kind of approach seems so natural to him that it doesn't come across as rigid or mechanical. Pfeiffer is the fire and Ryder is the blanket trying to put it out but DD-L is ultimate the film's life. Like Olivier, his stage equivalent, it is intimated that he is an actor who doesn't really have much sense of himself outside of performing. Here he is a character stuck inside the ritual and customs he is obliged to follow, desperate to break free and be himself, but not knowing how to do so.
(In some sense the film is a forerunner to Shutter Island in that, SPOILER, at the end, it turns out that the lead character has been lured into a trap that everybody else was in on.)
The film is about the spirit of the New World trying to break free from the old world shackles it has placed upon itself, and Scorsese trying to find a way to assert himself in alien territory. Maybe, ultimately he doesn't quite succeed. Newland's fate should be heartbreaking (this is a very cruel story) but the final scene doesn't have the emotional kick it should have.
(The final epilogue section, when Newland is supposed to be 57, is stymied by Day-Lewis being made up to look far too old. He looks like the astronaut at the end of 2001 rather than the 60-year-old we saw in Phantom Fred.)
If you wonder why Scorsese choose this project its because it's a New York story and if there's one thing he knows it's New York. There's a lovely shot of men walking through a dusty street, holding on to their bowler hats to stop them blowing off in the breeze. It's a companion piece to Gangs Of New York, and you wish he could have handled that project as well and as confidently as he did this one.
Extras.
New, restored 4k digital transfer, approved by director Martin Scorsese, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
New interviews with Scorsese, coscreenwriter Jay Cocks, production designer Dante Ferretti, and costume designer Gabriella Pescucci
Innocence and Experience, a 1993 documentary on the making of the film
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by film critic Geoffrey O’Brien
Directed by Martin Scorsese. 1993.
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Miriam Margolyes, Richard E. Grant, Alec McCowen, Geraldine Chaplin, Mary Beth Hurt, Stuart Wilson, Michael Gough and Joanne Woodward. 138 mins. Released on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection.
In the ranks of Martin Scorsese films that slip your mind, this 90s costume drama, an adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel, doesn't have the obscurity of Bringing Out The Dead or Kundun. But, if we rule out shorts, documentaries and anything pre Mean Streets, I reckon it would be a toss-up between this and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for the position of third most forgotten Scorsese feature. Post-Goodfella, the 90s would be a strange period for Scorsese, a time of wandering and exploration as he was winding down his partnership with De Niro (they would make Cape Fear and Casino either side of this) and had yet to team up with DiCaprio.
At the time, Age of Innocence was seen as one of his more mechanical efforts, a chance to rifle through his encyclopedic knowledge of films and mimic shots from various favourites such as Powell/ Pressburger, Visconti, Welles, etc. Starting with a title sequence made by Saul and Elaine Bass, it is technically immaculate. But then you could say that of all Scorsese films. Seeing it again after a quarter of a century is to realise what a fantastic adaptation it is and that it is one of his finest films, perhaps the best of the non-De Niro one.
If Scorsese's style is a pastiche of old movies, it is appropriate because the film is documenting a pastiche society. Upper-class New York in 1870s is a small little world based rigidly on the laws and rituals of British society. But like a fundamentalist sect, they've taken the strictures to absurd lengths. Normally the costumes are the chief instruments of oppression in costume dramas, showing how rigid the society is but Scorsese's visual design fetishes the flowers and the meals, his camera lingering over each immaculate dinner course, moving in on the various bunches of flowers. In this world the newly returned Madame Odenska (Pfeiffer) is a figure of scandal, having walked out on an unhappy marriage to a Polish count and returned to New York. Newland Archer (Day-Lewis) is engaged to her young cousin May (Ryder) and as a lawyer is entrusted with the task of persuading her not to get a divorce for fear of the scandal that it will bring on the family.
One of the film's many intrigues is that it a Director's Film of what would normally be an Actors Film. Scorsese's approach is less kinetic and the camera movement more restrained than on something like Raging Bull but there is still plenty to busy the eye. Scorsese uses iris shots and fades to red, yellow and white to make sure we know he's in charge. But the subject matter is restraint, a society where points are made subtly and rebukes are minimalist. The thespian classes love this kind of subtlety and the chance to be discretely waspish. It's like a Merchant/ Ivory production that has been airlifted overseas to entertain the natives with half of Equity there doing what they do best: sitting or standing erect, clipping their delivery and seeming very pleased with themselves.
In the middle of it all are three exceptional performances. Ryder's May is a figure of decoration and banality; she's shallow but her shallowness goes down a long way and Ryder gets across her dogged commitment to superficiality. Pfeiffer has a real talent for playing women that make men want to rescue. It works for the film that she is the performer that seems the least period, the least at home in the costumes.
And then there's Day-Lewis who, then as now, is the consummate screen actor. He made half his name in a Merchant/ Ivory film (A Room With a View, half of a mid-eighties double whammy with My Beautiful Launderette) and you feel that Scorsese needs him to anchor the piece. DD-L is all actor, every move seems thought out, but that kind of approach seems so natural to him that it doesn't come across as rigid or mechanical. Pfeiffer is the fire and Ryder is the blanket trying to put it out but DD-L is ultimate the film's life. Like Olivier, his stage equivalent, it is intimated that he is an actor who doesn't really have much sense of himself outside of performing. Here he is a character stuck inside the ritual and customs he is obliged to follow, desperate to break free and be himself, but not knowing how to do so.
(In some sense the film is a forerunner to Shutter Island in that, SPOILER, at the end, it turns out that the lead character has been lured into a trap that everybody else was in on.)
The film is about the spirit of the New World trying to break free from the old world shackles it has placed upon itself, and Scorsese trying to find a way to assert himself in alien territory. Maybe, ultimately he doesn't quite succeed. Newland's fate should be heartbreaking (this is a very cruel story) but the final scene doesn't have the emotional kick it should have.
(The final epilogue section, when Newland is supposed to be 57, is stymied by Day-Lewis being made up to look far too old. He looks like the astronaut at the end of 2001 rather than the 60-year-old we saw in Phantom Fred.)
If you wonder why Scorsese choose this project its because it's a New York story and if there's one thing he knows it's New York. There's a lovely shot of men walking through a dusty street, holding on to their bowler hats to stop them blowing off in the breeze. It's a companion piece to Gangs Of New York, and you wish he could have handled that project as well and as confidently as he did this one.
Extras.
New, restored 4k digital transfer, approved by director Martin Scorsese, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
New interviews with Scorsese, coscreenwriter Jay Cocks, production designer Dante Ferretti, and costume designer Gabriella Pescucci
Innocence and Experience, a 1993 documentary on the making of the film
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by film critic Geoffrey O’Brien
