Film review

Martin Scorsese (1993)

The BFI’s Martin Scorsese retrospective sharpens awareness of the pattern in his filmography of alternation between obviously dynamic pieces – what many consider echt Scorsese – and quieter excursions into genres you don’t immediately associate with him.  Goodfellas was preceded by The Last Temptation of Christ and Hugo succeeded by The Wolf of Wall Street.  The last-named, a vibrant story of Mammon, has recently been followed by the solemn religiosity of Silence.  One of the most striking juxtapositions of this kind sees Scorsese’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence sandwiched between Cape Fear and Casino.   The latter two pictures are among Scorsese’s most garishly violent.   Roger Ebert described The Age of Innocence as ‘bloody and brutal’ but the damage done is psychological and emotional rather than physical:  Ebert went on to summarise  the film as ‘the story of a man’s passion crushed, his heart defeated’.  I’d seen The Age of Innocence once before, probably not too long after its original release; preparing to return to it, I was puzzled that I remembered so little.  Now that I’ve seen it again, I’m no longer puzzled.  The movie is greatly conscientious yet dramatically inert.

The lawyer Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis), heir to the fortune of one of 1870s New York’s most prominent families, is set to make a highly suitable marriage.  His bride-to-be is the lovely and demure May Welland (Winona Ryder).  Newland finds himself increasingly intrigued by May’s older cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), recently returned from Europe after extricating herself from a bad marriage to a Polish count.  Ellen fascinates Newland with both her beauty and her readiness to break the unwritten but unarguable code of conduct of New York high society – a quality that makes her the polar opposite of the thoroughly conventional May Welland.   According to this code, a married couple’s living apart is regrettable but tolerable; divorce is scandalous and disgraceful.  Ellen’s intention to divorce her husband gives rise to a social crisis for her family and a law partner of Newland’s asks him to dissuade her from this course of action.  He succeeds, at the cost of finding himself increasingly attracted to her.  When he confesses his feelings, Ellen, although she reciprocates them, agrees to stay in America – in Washington – only if she and Newland don’t sexually consummate their love.  He marries May and tries, with limited success, to forget Ellen.

Back in New York to care for her ailing grandmother (Miriam Margolyes), Ellen has no sooner assented to Newland’s insistence that they embark on a physical relationship than she decides to return to Europe.  Newland intends to follow her there until May announces that she is pregnant;  she subsequently admits to her husband that she told Ellen of the pregnancy even before she was herself sure of it.  Newland realises this was the cause of Ellen’s sudden decision to leave America.  Although his marriage is, from his point of view, loveless, he remains with May for the sake of their unborn baby and, in time, the two other children they have together.  Nearly thirty years later, May has died.  Newland accompanies his elder son Ted (Robert Sean Leonard), at the latter’s insistence, on a trip to Paris, where Ellen now lives.  Ted tells his father that May, on her deathbed, confided to her son about Newland that, ‘she knew we were safe with you, and always would be. Because once, when she asked you to, you gave up the thing you wanted most’.  (May never asked this of Newland explicitly but perhaps did so in effect.)  While Ted pays Ellen a visit, Newland remains outside the apartment building, looking up at her balcony.

The Age of Innocence is pictorially beautiful and exceedingly careful; those two adjectives certainly describe the looks and performances of the three main actors.  Scorsese, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks, says in Scorsese on Scorsese (edited by David Thompson and Ian Christie) that, reading the novel, he ‘loved the way I was led by Wharton down the path of Newland’s point of view’ and that ‘ … when you fall in love, you can’t see what other people see.  You become as passionate and obsessive as Newland, who can’t see what’s going on around him’.  A difficulty with bringing these qualities of the book to the screen – at least in the way they’ve been brought to the screen by Scorsese – is that the viewer isn’t limited to Newland Archer’s viewpoint and can see what other people see.  What’s more, we see that those other people, with whom Newland meets, dines and conducts polite conversation, can see too that something is eating him.  Daniel Day-Lewis has a fine animation and emotional mobility in Newland’s early meetings with Ellen – increasingly excited, incredulously laughing.  As Newland becomes unhappy, he’s too easy to read – almost inevitably, since the character doesn’t speak his mind so there’s no other way for the actor to dramatise his predicament.  But Day-Lewis is so grim-faced that, even allowing for the strict social rules that govern behaviour and May’s seeming ingenuousness, it’s surprising no one asks him what’s the matter.  Daniel Day-Lewis is impressive again as the late-middle-aged Newland – gaunt, grey, walking with difficulty.

Although she’s highly proficient, Michelle Pfeiffer lacks the emotional fluidity that seems needed to bring to life the contrast between Ellen and the stultifying, acquiescent May, whom Winona Ryder plays very effectively.  Ryder has the advantage that there turns out to be more to May Welland than meets the eye; she makes the most of this advantage in what she implies in her later scenes.  In a supporting cast that includes Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Gough, Richard E Grant, Mary Beth Hurt, Norman Lloyd, Alec McCowen, Siân Phillips, Jonathan Pryce, Alexis Smith and Stuart Wilson, Miriam Margolyes is outstanding.  The grand-matriarch Mrs Manson Mingott, surrounded by cushions and lap dogs, is never seen to stand on her own two feet yet Margolyes gives the liveliest performance in the film.

Joanne Woodward supplies the voiceover narration, also carefully delivered.  There’s an uneasiness to Scorsese’s use of this (and of Elmer Bernstein’s obviously interpretive score) – as if he fears the visuals won’t, at least for audience members unfamiliar with the Wharton novel, speak for themselves.  (In spite of the gulf between the cultural setting of The Age of Innocence and that of Goodfellas and Casino, their voiceovers are similar in that each seems designed to explain what’s going on in the minds, beneath the behaviour, of the characters.)   The camera movements – panning across the gorgeous abundance of flowers, fruit, china and crystal – tend to be slow and stately, only occasionally swifter.   These movements are expressive:  so too Gabriella Pescucci’s double-edged costumes.  The rich decoration of these both reinforces their beauty as pieces of design and confirms them as symbols of the imprisoning qualities of the society being described:  a fancy waistcoat of Newland’s takes on the look of a high-fashion straitjacket.  Martin Scorsese’s concerns are unfounded:  the visuals speak for themselves only too well.  Thanks to them, we get the message too soon – without getting a sustained equivalent of a novelist’s voice to give body to the story.

4 February 2017