The age of innocence martin scorsese biography

Thirty years ago, Martin Scorsese upended viewers’ expectations with the premiere of a new addition to his canon: The Age of Innocence, adapted from Edith Wharton’s 1920 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. By this point, Scorsese had become known for directing films like Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Taxi Driver, studies of masculinity highlighted by expressions of rage and isolation. Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver enacted a grim fantasy of male violence by stomping into a brothel and shooting dead a group of men inside; Jake LaMotta, the boxer in Raging Bull, boorishly pummeled his wife after discovering her infidelity. And Goodfellas is entirely structured around generations of a Brooklyn Mafia syndicate, the passing of the gangster torch.

The period romance of The Age of Innocence, meanwhile, does away with guns and punches entirely. It’s the subtlest of Wharton’s masterpieces, a catalog which also includes the harsh yet hilarious consumerism satire The Custom of the Countryand the tragic The House of Mirth, which ends in a socialite’s suicide. Scorsese, along with co-writer Jay Cocks, faithfully adapted Wharton’s novel, which follows the milquetoast banker Newland Archer and his doomed affair with his fiancée’s cousin. Wharton recreated in Innocence the vanished world of her 1870s Old New York childhood, a mannered, insular, ultimately superficial society where “what was or was not ‘the thing,’” Wharton wrote, was what governed its members’ destinies.

Scorsese treated this subject matter with the weight, nuance, and emotional intensity of his most noted movies. He rejected the notion that New York’s superficial decorum in Innocence was less dramatically rich than, say, the more poverty-stricken New York that his other protagonists had inhabited. In fact, a

 [film clip: The Magic Box, by John Boulting]   

That scene was from a picture called The Magic Box, which was made in England in 1950. The great English actor Robert Donat plays the inventor William Friese-Greene – he was one of the people who invented movies. The Magic Box was packed with guest stars. It was made for an event called the Festival of Britain. You had about 50 or 60 of the biggest actors in England at the time, all doing for the most part little cameos, including the man who played the policeman – that was Sir Laurence Olivier.

I saw this picture for the first time with my father.  I was 8 years old. I’ve never really gotten over the impact that it had. I believe this is what ignited in me the wonder of cinema, and the obsession – of watching movies, making them, inventing them.

Friese-Greene gives everything of himself to the movies, and he dies poor. He dies a pauper.  That line – “You must be a very happy man, Mr. Friese-Greene” –of course is ironic, knowing the full story of his life, but in some ways it’s also true because he’s followed his obsession all the way. So it’s both disturbing and inspiring. I was very young.  I couldn’t put this into words when I saw this, but I sensed them. I sensed these ideas and these things and saw them up there on the screen.

My parents had a good reason for taking me to the movies all the time, because I was always sick with asthma since I was three years old and I apparently couldn’t do any sports, or that’s what they told me. But really, my mother and father did love the movies. They weren’t in the habit of reading, that didn’t really exist where I came from, and so we connected through the movies.

And over the years I know now that the warmth of that connection with my family and with the images up on the screen gave me something very precious. We were experiencing something fundamental together. We were living through the emotional truths on the screen t

Image description: Michelle Pfeiffer portraying Countess Ellen Olenska in the film Age of Innocence.

Martin Scorsese is, without doubt, my favourite film director.

Watching GoodFellas in my early teenage years, I was captivated, while somewhat conflicted, by the anti-hero Henry Hill’s life of excess. The film begins with Henry as a teenager himself. Soon, he is drawn into the cruel, though perversely attractive, world of the Italian-American Mafia. The power this brings him, “being somebody in a neighbourhood of nobodies”, leads him down the dark road of drug trafficking, leading to his arrest and ‘ratting out’ of his entire criminal organisation. There are characters just like Henry in all Scorsese films. Jordan Belfort – also known as the Wolf of Wall Street – mutates from a seemingly principled and driven young man fresh out of college, into a monster intent upon driving up Stratton Oakmont’s profits at any cost.

These men – controversially it is usually men which are the focus of these films – are certainly flawed. Whether or not they are evil is something much harder to determine. It is also something which, in my opinion, has never been the interest of Scorsese himself. This is a director who explores the complexities of human psychology; his stories leave us questioning if we too could be ensnared in the web of sin and defilement which the characters inevitably are. Importantly, he never gives us a ‘Hollywood’ ending. The fast, precarious lives of his subjects always catch up with them, acting as a reminder to the audience that restraint is always the better option – even if it is less exciting!

The violence Scorsese refers to, though, is one of emotion, which he believes is far more damaging and carries far greater consequences.

I was certain that GoodFellas, or at least one of the many Scorsese examinations of the New York criminal underworld, would provide the subj

1993 film directed by Martin Scorsese

The Age of Innocence is a 1993 American historicalromantic drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. The screenplay was adapted from Edith Wharton's 1920 novel of the same name by Scorsese and Jay Cocks. The film stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, and Miriam Margolyes, and was released by Columbia Pictures. It tells the story of Newland Archer (Day-Lewis), a wealthy New York society attorney who finds himself caught between two women, the conformist May Welland (Ryder) and the unconventional Countess Ellen Olenska (Pfeiffer).

The Age of Innocence was released theatrically on September 17, 1993, by Columbia Pictures. It received critical acclaim, winning the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, and being nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Ryder), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Art Direction. Margolyes won the Best Supporting Actress BAFTA in 1994. The film grossed $68 million on a $34 million budget. Scorsese dedicated the film to his father, Luciano Charles Scorsese, who died the month before it was released. Luciano and his wife, Catherine Scorsese, have cameo appearances in the film.

Plot

In the 1870s, New York City is dominated by a community of old-money WASP families whose lives are guided by strict codes of conduct. The elite police their own through ostracism, or worse.

Gentleman lawyer Newland Archer is planning a society marriage to May Welland. May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, returns to New York after a disastrous marriage to a Polish aristocrat. When the count cheated on Ellen, Ellen retaliated by sleeping with her secretary. Because of high society's double standards, Ellen's conduct is considered particularly scandalous. As a result, she is initially ostracized. Archer is indignant at the unfair treatment and helps Ellen's family restore Ellen's place in the community.

Ellen meets f