Age of Innocence [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Carolyn Farina, Daniel Day-Lewis, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, Geraldine Chaplin, Tracey Ellis
Primary Contributor: Daniel Day-Lewis
Primary Contributor: Michelle Pfeiffer
Primary Contributor: Winona Ryder
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
Running Time: 138 minutes
Release Date: 1998-01-20
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Studio: Sony Pictures

VHS Movie Reviews of Age of Innocence [VHS]

Movie Review: The talk of the town.
Summary: 3 Stars

The Age of Innocence is a beautiful period piece based on the classic novel, it's still strange to me that this film was directed by Martin Scorcese. Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder play the lead characters, Pfeiffer is so vulnerable and stunning here - she never got the respect she deserved as a serious actress. I like this film but it isn't flawless but still good enough to check it out, enjoy!

Movie Review: Ravishing
Summary: 5 Stars

Martin Scorsese directing a Merchant-Ivory film might superficially describe "The Age of Innocence," but it would do an injustice to both parties. This is a Marty movie through and through -- beautifully filmed, expertly acted, and thematically obsessed with guilt, passion, and moral failings.

In adapting Edith Wharton's classic novel of forbidden love in a repressive society, Scorsese has an anthropologist's obsessive eye for cultural detail -- the cutlery, the dainty dishes, the linen, the clothes. And of course the social rituals -- the after-dinner brandy & cigar, opera-going audience gazing, and the handwritten notes attached to bouquets of flowers. The attention to surface texture in the film has a transporting effect; it is one of the best period pieces ever made.

Time-traveling to an unfamiliar milieu freed Scorsese's aesthetic instincts. "The Age of Innocence" is hardly a polite study of quaint social customs; it is a passionate, adventurous film, dripping with color and breathtaking compositions. Scorsese revels in the texture of the world he and his collaborators have painstakingly recreated, a world where passions are lidded but bubble over in the form of colorful flower bouquets and passionate opera arias. This film belongs on a shortlist of the most physically ravishing films ever made (and not just because of Michelle Pfeiffer), but because Scorsese cuts loose with his painterly style of image-making.

Though a PG-rated period piece might seem like a departure for Scorsese, he observed that "This film deals with the same matters that can be found in my work in the last 25 years. There is guilt, desire, obsessed passion and the weakness to satisfy that passion." Notice how he describes the desire to satisfy passion as a "weakness." Where most directors would romanticize the love affair between Newland and the Countess, Scorsese sees it as doomed from the start, and he is careful not to make either character (especially Newland) too sympathetic. Newland has eaten of the fruit of passion, and the fact that Scorsese does not (necessarily) valorize his passion makes the film that much more interesting. Newland's choice was between duty and passion, honor and real love. A less astute, less interesting filmmaker than Scorsese would have made the choice a no-brainer, damn the consequences. For most modern storytellers, passion is paramount. Passion is freedom. For Scorsese, passion has a dark side. Although he recognizes the hypocrisy and barely-concealed vindictiveness of aristocratic society, there remains something recognizably Old World about his sensibilities.

Movie Review: Age of Innocence
Summary: 3 Stars

Silly "period" movie. Bought it because RSL is in it.
Service from vendor was quick and competent.

Movie Review: Movie for 15 and over
Summary: 5 Stars

One of the most beautiful love stories I have ever seen in a movie. It is most beautifully portrayed and ends the way you hope all love stories would end.

Movie Review: Fails to engage
Summary: 3 Stars

Tried to care about this elegant saga, but despite all the fetching details and careful crafting, it all feels rather pointless. Michelle Pfeiffer turns in a radiant performance in her effort to prevail through these overstuffed rooms and overwrought sensibilities, but can't quite manage it.

The stumbling point, in my view, Daniel Day-Lewis here plainly just doesn't cut it as a leading man. His emasculated, simpering deadpan, dispensing dialogue medicinally as so much cough syrup, completely fails to engage as a romantic figure. The notion of Michelle's ravishing, vivacious character head over heels for him is more than a stretch. I've seen gunfighters with more chemistry than these two. Their first intimate scene, eek! Comes off like a stumble in a crowded bus. This mis-casting is quite annoying, as this movie appears in many ways to have had real promise.

Wynona Ryder does well enough as the porcelain, sidelined fiance, but what does it matter, the whole thing fails on the glaring mismatch of the two leads.

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Summary of Age of Innocence [VHS]

Martin Scorsese does not sound like the logical choice to direct an adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about manners and morals in New York society in the 1870s. But these are mean streets, too, and the psychological violence inflicted between characters is at least as damaging as the physical violence perpetrated by Scorsese's usual gangsters. At the center of the tale is Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis), a somewhat diffident young man engaged to marry the very respectable May Welland (Winona Ryder). But Archer is distracted by May's cousin, the Countess Olenska (a radiant Michelle Pfeiffer), recently returned from Europe. As a married woman seeking a divorce, the countess is an embarrassment to all of New York society. But Archer is fascinated by her quick intelligence and worldly ways. Scorsese closely observes the tiny details of this world and this impossible situation; this is a movie in which the shift of someone's eyes can be as significant as the firing of a gun. The director's sense of color has never been keener, and his work with the actors is subtle. That's Joanne Woodward narrating, telling us only as much as we need to know--which is one reason why the climax comes as such a surprise.--Robert Horton

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