The Age of Innocence (1993)

Directed by: Martin Scorsese | 139 minutes | drama, romance | Actors: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Alexis Smith, Geraldine Chaplin, Mary Beth Hurt, Alec McCowen, Richard E. Grant, Miriam Margolyes, Robert Sean Leonard, Siân Phillips, Jonathan Pryce, Michael Gough, Joanne Woodward, Stuart Wilson

Many costume dramas derive their strength from the contradiction between social conventions and free love; Rarely, however, has this theme been applied with such refinement and originality as in ‘The Age of Innocence’, Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 19th-century novel of the same name. Central to the drama is Newland Archer, a successful gentleman who thinks he is fully involved in the social game. It lands him a marriage with the apparently naive beauty May and his living seems bought. The exterior isn’t enough for Newland, however, as it turns out when he meets May’s niece Ellen Olenska. The free-spirited Ellen is the perfect match for Newland, who is thrown into doubt; the women know how to do that.

The choice for a male perspective offers a pleasant change from the classic costume films dominated by Jane Austen heroines; it shines a different light on the backbiting and social strategy-dominated world of the nineteenth-century empires. We see a man who goes crazy in the web that women weave, for the simple reason that he is disarmed by his infatuation; sometimes fun. Scorsese puts aside his fascination with raucous antiheroes in a physically violent world to paint a humiliating picture of the New York upper class. A strange switch? No, it is not. The wealthy of Manhattan care about money and power as much as their poor fellow townspeople; they just express it in a different way: no punches, but manipulations; in this form too, Scorsese appears to be able to excel with ambiguous main characters.

The basic material is enough to lift a simple adultery story above mediocrity, but perfectionist Scorsese and his excellent cast make ‘The Age of Innocence’ really worthwhile. Every shot is a painting in this film; Day-Lewis, Pfeiffer and Ryder show themselves suitable models. Day-Lewis manages to rise above his sphinx-like appearance with a romantic lead role and Pfeiffer and Ryder make the most of their possibilities as ambiguous heroines. ‘The Age of Innocence’ is a titillating tableau vivant, from which the restrained emotion and especially the double morality are splashed; Scorsese shows himself to be both a Dutch Master and a French Impressionist with his beautiful trio.