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USA 1993
Directed by
Martin Scorsese
132 minutes
Rated PG

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3 stars

The Age Of Innocence

Martin Scorsese's rendition of Edith Wharton's 1920 Pulitzer prize-winning novel set amongst the wealthy upper-class families of 1870's New York seems like a curiously subdued drama from a director known for much more impactful work. The three principals, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfieffer and Winona Rider (who was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar) are like marionettes that Scorsese is unable to invest with life and whilst the film is meticulously-detailed and gorgeous to look at (it won an Oscar for costume design), the theme of unrequited love foundering in the gap between a surface of impregnable social formality and the depths of unruly desire thrumming beneath it remains no more than an idea.

Ironically this appears to be because Scorsese remains so faithful to the novel. The principal problem being that it describes the inconsequential world of a group of idly rich, self-satisfied ninnies and who really wants to watch that? Wharton's dispassionately observational text maintains an authorial voice explaining and reflecting on what her narrator sees and Scorsese repeats the device here (with the voice of Joanne Woodward) but this only serves to further distance us from the already carefully sequestered characters. (Michael Ballhaus’s point-of-view camerawork is presumably meant to suggest an unseen observer but it is more intrusive than effective).

Comparing it with thematically-related there are none of the deliciously decadent high society antics of Stephens Frears' Dangerous Liaisons (1988) in which Pfieffer also starred to much greater effect or the unspoken but palpable beneath-stairs yearnings of Merchant-Ivory’s Remains Of The Day (which was also released in 1993) to enliven proceedings. Rather Scorsese self-defeatingly adheres to the restraint of Wharton’s tale of unrequited love (the fumbling love scenes between Pfieffer’s Countess and Day-Lewis’s Newland Archer must be amongst the most awkward ever committed to film).  Had the director and co-writer Jay Cocks been more adventurous with the script (though one can imagine the outcry from traditionalists) his film might have had the life it deserved and Day-Lewis and Pfieffer had the chance to do more than act out lives of quiet desperation.

Although rarely mentioned in discussion of  Scorsese’s canon (it’s a far cry from 2002's much more characteristic Gangs of New York which is set only a few years earlier and is a very different view of Big Apple cliques nevertheless The Age of Innocence exemplifies the director’s meticulous production standards and lovers of costume dramas will find plenty to enjoy.

 

 

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