Movie · 1993 · Drama, Romance · 2h 18m · PG · English
Curator score: 8.0/10 (212.4K ratings)
In a world of tradition. In an age of innocence. They dared to break the rules.
Overview
In 19th century New York high society, a young lawyer falls in love with a woman separated from her husband, while he is engaged to the woman's cousin.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.0/10
IMDb: 7.2/10
Letterboxd: 3.81/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 88%
Metacritic: 90
TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
Martin Scorsese
Production
Columbia Pictures, Cappa/De Fina Productions
Cast
Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Alexis Smith, Geraldine Chaplin, Jonathan Pryce, Richard E. Grant, Alec McCowen, Mary Beth Hurt, Stuart Wilson, Howard Erskine, John McLoughlin, Christopher Nilsson, Miriam Margolyes, Siân Phillips, Carolyn Farina, Michael Gough, Joanne Woodward, Robert Sean Leonard, June Squibb
Where to watch
TCM
Curator Review
Verdict
A lush, exquisitely controlled period romance about desire, duty, and self-delusion, with Scorsese turning social manners into emotional violence. It’s elegant, melancholy, and quietly devastating rather than openly dramatic.
Best for
viewers who like prestige period dramas with emotional restraint
fans of doomed romance and social constraint
people who appreciate meticulous production design and visual storytelling
audiences interested in class, etiquette, and repression
Skip if
you want fast pacing or overt melodrama
you prefer romance with clear catharsis
you’re not in the mood for formal, literary dialogue
you dislike stories where characters are trapped by social convention
Overview
Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence is one of his most surprising films, and one of his most precise. He transforms Edith Wharton’s world of drawing rooms, flowers, and coded glances into a system of pressure so intense it feels like a thriller in silk gloves. Every gesture matters, and every social ritual carries the force of a weapon.
Worth noting
Daniel Day-Lewis plays Newland Archer as a man who mistakes passivity for virtue, while Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder give the film its competing emotional poles: desire and duty, freedom and decorum. The result is not a sweeping romance so much as a study of self-imprisonment, where the tragedy comes from what is never said aloud.
Bottom line
What lingers most is the film’s sense of beauty as confinement. The costumes, interiors, and camera movement are ravishing, but they also make the world feel sealed shut. It’s a melancholy, adult film about the cost of choosing comfort over truth, and it stays with you long after the final image.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Nick Naney (4★) · 6042 likes
Funny to think of a bunch of guidos still high off Goodfellas going to see this together and being like “da fuck was Marty thinking?!” but one of them secretly weeps in the bathroom of the pizzeria they hit up later
Sean Gilman (5★) · 3811 likes
Rewatch confirms what I've suspected for awhile: this is Martin Scorsese's very best movie . . . poor Newland Archer, always thinking he's the smartest person in the room when in fact he's the dumbest . . . and what rooms, those sweeping tracking shots, rooms cluttered with objects, the conspicuous wealth of the 1870s, generated on the backs of the wholly absent poor . . . a world of unimaginable riches and power, so seductive, its occupants entirely unaware… more Rewatch confirms what I've suspected for awhile: this is Martin Scorsese's very best movie . . . poor Newland Archer, always thinking he's the smartest person in the room when in fact he's the dumbest . . . and what rooms, those sweeping tracking shots, rooms cluttered with objects, the conspicuous wealth of the 1870s, generated on the backs of the wholly absent poor . . . a world of unimaginable riches and power, so seductive, its occupants entirely unaware… more
fran hoepfner (4.5★) · 3038 likes
I docked a half star for this movie not being able to predict how nicely Daniel Day-Lewis would age
2019 · Drama, Romance · 2h 15m · PG · Curator 9.3/10 (2.9M ratings) · Where to watch: Hulu
For its literary texture, emotional intelligence, and attention to the pressures placed on women’s lives.
Topics
period drama, romantic tragedy, literary adaptation, Victorian-era, social satire, melancholy, prestige cinema, class conflict, lush production design, psychological drama