USA,
1993, 138 min
Shown in 2000
CREDITS
- dir
-
Martin Scorsese
- prod
-
Barbara De Fina
- scr
-
Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese
- cam
-
Michael Ballhaus
- editor
-
Thelma Schoonmaker
- cast
-
Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Richard E. Grant, Alec McCowen, Miriam Margolyes, Geraldine Chaplin, Jonathan Pryce
- source
-
Columbia Pictures Repertory, 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232. FAX: 310-244-0466
-
COMMENTS
Winona Ryder appeared in person as the recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award in 2000.
OTHER
Winona Ryder gives her most acclaimed performance in Martin Scorsese’s visually rapturous adaptation of Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Set in 1870s New York City, where high society is ruled by a strict code of mores and manners, The Age of Innocence seems an unlikely directorial choice for Scorsese, but in actuality Wharton’s novel delves into the same themes that inform much of his work: obsession, the repression of desire, the power of guilt. Ryder plays May, a soft-spoken young socialite whose husband (Daniel Day-Lewis) has entered into an illicit, but unconsummated, affair with her cousin, the slightly scandalous Countess Olesnska (Michelle Pfeiffer). As the forlorn lovers, Day-Lewis and Pfeiffer may have the more obviously dramatic roles, but it is Ryder’s performance that emerges as the most affecting. With remarkable restraint, Ryder carefully develops her understated, seemingly naive character, whose depth is not fully realized until the film’s revelatory final moments. While her character’s strengths may be easily missed, Ryder’s are not. Her finely-shaded performance earned her a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, as well as her first Academy Award nomination.
—Doug Jones
FACTOID #61
The first repertory film screened at Festival was The Bluebird (1940), based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, showed October 23, 1965, with Shirley Temple Black in person to discuss her role in the film.
