April 1, 2026
SIFF, Festa Italiana, and Greg Olson Productions Present
MARTIN SCORSESE
MAESTRO OF CINEMA
The Age of Innocence (1993) Martin Scorsese: You know, this was the last film of mine my father saw and I dedicated it to him. He died during this period, and he was the one who took me to the movies as a boy. When I was making the film I was thinking very much about my father’s sense of obligation and responsibility — what he did for us, whether he was massaging me with alcohol to get a fever down or going through all the madness with my doctors, not having an education, not knowing how to deal with all this, I thought that Newland Archer has that kind of responsibility. I can identify with those feelings of wanting to take and not taking, of wanting to proceed with something and not proceeding. I had a late adolescence in a way, even up to the point when I made The Age of Innocence. It made me think, at the age of fifty, what if I’d been a different type of person, one who could have handled such things easily? Would my life have been very different? I read a lot of history, the ancient world, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I’m interested in the way these people lived, the physical details and the codes of their society. Sometimes from my townhouse that was built in the 1860s, late at night at one o’clock in the morning, I can hear a horse and carriage go by. That’s the sound of the nineteenth century. Maybe we’re yearning for a quieter time. I think we’ve lost something. What strikes me about The Age of Innocence is the brutality under the beautiful manners. People hide what they mean under the surface of language. In the Little Italy subculture I grew up in, when somebody was killed, there was a finality to it. It was usually done by the hands of a friend. It was almost like a ritualistic sacrifice. But in 1870s high society things were so cold-blooded. Which way is preferable? In my private life I’ve come to appreciate the ability to say a little in certain emotional situations and mean a lot. When Newland first sees Ellen, it’s through his opera glasses. It’s not in just regular time. We did stop-frame photography, one frame at a time, printed each frame three times, and dissolved between each three frames. His heightened attention is conveyed. That took almost a year of experimentation to get right. The spirit of exquisite romantic pain, the idea that touching a woman’s hand would suffice, seeing her across a crowded room would keep him alive for another year. I shortened shots, like a brush swishing by, painting bits of color, Joanne Woodward’s voice, like Edith Wharton’s, whispering in your ear.
Directed by: Martin Scorsese Screenplay by: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese from Edith Wharton’s book Cinematography by: Michael Ballhaus Edited by: Thelma Schoonmaker Music by: Elmer Bernstein Production Design by: Dante Ferretti Costume Design by: Gabriella Pescucci THE PLAYERS: Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen Olenska Winona Ryder as May Welland Alexis Smith as Louisa vad der Luyden Geraldine Chaplin as Mrs. Welland Mary Beth Hurt as Regina Beaufort Alec McCowen as Sillerton Jackson Richard E. Grant as Larry Lefferts Miriam Margolyes as Mrs. Mingot
Thanks to The New Yorker poet, film curator and teacher Tova Gannana for her film essay.
Robert SeanLeonard as Ted Archer
Greg Olson Productions is sponsored by Inn at the Market.
Joanne Woodward as Narrator