The Age of Innocence (1993)
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Film Review

The name Martin Scorsese automatically calls to mind bleak and brutally realistic forays into nihilistic machismo, through such films as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990).  Scorsese is not a filmmaker you would expect to hanker after directing an adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel The Age of Innocence, a bitter piece of social commentary in which one man's romantic yearnings are frustrated and ultimately crushed by the hypocritical conventions of polite New York society of the 1870s.  Yet Scorsese had long been fascinated by Wharton's Pulitzer Prize winning novel and within this literary masterpiece it is not too difficult to see some connections with the themes underpinning much of his work - in particular, the power of the family and the struggle to assert one's individual freedom in a milieu that expects compliance and conformity.  It is interesting to compare this film with the 1934 adaptation directed by Philip Moeller and starring Irene Dunne and John Boles.

Being attuned to the ways in which human beings hurt, manipulate and exploit one another, Scorsese was admirably suited to bringing The Age of Innocence to the big screen, and, far from being atypical it fits comfortably into his oeuvre as one of his most brutal and pessimistic films.  There are no outlandish fights, with litres of gore spilling over the set as the bodies pile up, but there is just as much malice and cruelty in sight, dressed up in society decorum in a way that makes it even more distasteful and shocking.  It is psychological, not physical, violence that Scorsese indulges in here, and the destructive impact of this invisible onslaught on the three main protagonists is powerfully conveyed by the trio of great actors in the principal roles - Daniel Day Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder.  Beautifully photographed, with lavish costumes and sets which mock rather than revere the excessive opulence of the period, The Age of Innocence is Martin Scorsese's most visually alluring film, but beneath the gilt-edged surface elegance he shows a glimpse of humanity that is more grim and barbaric than any contained in his hard-hitting gangster films.

Film Synopsis

New York in the 1870s.  The forthcoming marriage of the successful lawyer Newland Archer to May Welland, the scion of a great American family, is sure to be a major society event, but Newland's commitment to May wavers when he takes an interest in her unconventional cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska.  After a disastrous marriage to a Polish aristocrat, the Countess has returned to New York and would have been a social pariah were it not for the generous support of the Wellands.  Newland is as taken by the Countess's rebellious spirit as he is by her beauty, but when she reveals her intention to divorce her husband family loyalties compel him to dissuade her.  By now, May has begun to suspect that there may be another woman in her fiancé's life...