The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence remains a consistent spellbinder, laying bare its inhabitants’ follies and furies with a tender touch and a vigilant quietude that accumulates into a grand force. Read full review

I have seen love scenes in which naked bodies thrash in sweaty passion, but I have rarely seen them more passionate than in this movie, where everyone is wrapped in layers of Victorian repression. Read full review

Best “performances,'' however, are given by the movie's almost agonizingly beautiful historical settings -- luxurious households, rich architecture, furnishings, ornaments, draperies, fineries and such are often more captivating than the hushed tones of the lovers. [17 Sept 1993, Daily Notebook, p.C1]

It comes eerily close to duplicating the experience of reading while, at the same time, remaining very much a motion picture. That's a rare, perhaps even unprecedented, achievement. Read full review

A great, velvety, beautiful anachronism. It's a movie almost drunk on romance, literature and cinema, a splendid period picture that keeps rashly breaking rules and boundaries [17 Sept 1993, Friday, p.A]

A beautifully done adaptation of the novel, polished, elegant and completely cinematic. It is also a bit distant, a film that doesn't wear its feelings on its sleeve, but given the effects it's after, that would be counterproductive. [17 Sept 1993, Calendar, p.F-1]

Instead of "Masterpiece Theatre"-style fawning, [Scorsese] fills this movie with visual flow, masterful cinematography and assured direction. There's an alert, thinking presence behind the camera. Read full review

After watching Pfeiffer and Day-Lewis submerge molten 19th-century sparks here, it is now conceivable that Scorsese could make compelling cinema out of “Three Blind Mice.” [17 Sept 1993, Life, p.1D]

Thoughtful and reflective, it stands with the most exquisitely crafted films in recent memory, joining eloquently conceived images to an uncommonly literate screenplay. [17 Sept 1993, Arts, p.11]

A sumptuous motion picture, a feast for the senses. Read full review

A magnificent movie. [19 Oct 1993, p.A18(E)]

Martin Scorsese captures the exquisite agony and pleasure of passion that’s forced to remain theoretical. Read full review

Day-Lewis and Pfeifer are on top form with Ryder giving the performance of her career. Read full review

I love all those close-ups of fires blazing when the mood gets frosty. I love the lavish operas they attend, using the glasses to spy on each other. I love Elmer Bernstein's score, its ghostly waltzes and the way it seems to inspire the birds to soar upwards in the final heartbreaking scene in Paris, Wharton's adopted home. Read full review

The Age Of Innocence possesses a tension between the flowering of private passion and the quiet forces that make its survival impossible—and Scorsese, a master of coiled intensity, brings it across with heartbreaking force. Read full review

Magnificent...Scorsese's most poignantly moving film. Read full review

On screen as on the page, The Age of Innocence is a stunning period piece filled with depth charges. [17 Sept 1993, p.49]

This is a story that in hindsight we can see was waiting for Scorsese to come along. He did. The result is wonderful. [17 Sept 1993, p.G5]

Great works of literature seldom become great movies, as witness the competent but plodding recent screen adaptation of Wharton's "Ethan Frome." The Age of Innocence is a brilliant exception. [17 Sept 1993, p.3F]

Profoundly moving. [24 Sept 1993, p.17]

It's a beautiful story that extends past the boundaries of time. [1 Oct 1993, p.M-2]

With a loving hand and immeasurable skill, Scorsese has fashioned a classic film for any age, innocent or otherwise. [24 Sept 1993, p.8]

A gravely beautiful fairy tale of longing and loss. [20 Sept 1993, p.82]

Day-Lewis is smashing as the man caught between his emotions and the social ethic. Not since Olivier in "Wuthering Heights" has an actor matched piercing intelligence with such imposing good looks and physical grace. Read full review

The finished film is graceful, gripping and more accessible than several of Scorsese's contemporary New York movies. Scorsese has created a model adaptation that manages to be both remarkably faithful to its source and more audience-friendly than the Merchant/Ivory movies to which it will be compared. [17 Sept 1993, p.D3]

Up through its first half, The Age of Innocence is a masterfully orchestrated tale of romantic yearning. Read full review

Its loving exploration of the arcane workings of a closed society, that of wealthy, well-bred New Yorkers of the 1870s, has more in common than one might expect with Scorsese's earlier work, from "Mean Streets" through "Goodfellas." Read full review

Ms. Pfeifer is lovely, the visual focal point of the film, but also much more. With her soft voice, her reserve and her quickness of mind, her Ellen has emotional weight. She's the film's heart and conscience. [17 Sept 1993, p.C1]

Less fruitful is the casting of Michelle Pfeiffer as May's older cousin, the mysterious Countess Olenska, with whom Archer falls hopelessly in love. With her silly blond curls, Pfeiffer looks more plaintive than the dark exotic of Wharton's imagination. Read full review

Though lovely to behold, this film isn't meant to send you home with a song in your heart. Read full review

An unsure narrative hampers Age of Innocence’s ability to stand with the director’s more assured work, yet Scorsese’s period drama is a deeply cinematic experience, at once beautiful, oppressive and rich. Read full review

Scorsese has met most of the challenges inherent in tackling such a formidable period piece, but the material remains cloaked by the very propriety, stiff manners and emotional starchiness the picture delineates in such copious detail. Read full review

A bore... The film leaves you with the feeling, once again, of having enjoyed a lovely meal fit for royalty only to discover, too late, that the fruit was made of wax and the roast was little more than a Styrofoam mock-up. Read full review

As beautifully mounted as this production is, Scorsese has a way of letting the decor take over, so that Wharton's tale of societal constraints comes through only in fits and starts. But it's a noble failure. Read full review

What helps Pfeiffer most is the fact that though she is exceptionally pretty, she patently doesn't rely on her prettiness: she wants to act. But, with her Ellen, though we know what she means from moment to moment, we simply don't feel it... Winona Ryder is disastrously miscast. [18 Oct 1993, p.30]