Episode 292: The Age of Innocence on Screen

Summary

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Literary Life Podcast: Episode 292

The Age of Innocence on Screen

Released: September 1, 2025
Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, special guest Atlee Northhor (“the boy wonder of film”)
Overview:
In this highly engaging episode, Angelina, Thomas, and Atlee plunge deep into the film adaptations of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence—especially Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed 1993 production. They examine the history of the book’s adaptations, Scorsese’s unlikely and meticulous approach, the thematic challenges of translating Wharton’s narrative to screen, and the astonishing fidelity and artistry of the most recent film version.

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Main Theme

This episode scrutinizes how The Age of Innocence has made its way from page to screen, with a detailed breakdown of its rarely-seen silent and early talking adaptations and an enthusiastic, nuanced appreciation of Scorsese's masterful 1993 film. The hosts explore why this is perhaps the "best literary adaptation" they've encountered, and unpack just what makes it a triumph of both art and fidelity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Adaptations: Silent & 1934 Versions

Segment begins ~[18:10]

• 1924 Silent Film

  • The earliest adaptation is now lost, with only a script and a few production stills surviving.
  • Atlee describes its wild liberties: “It opens with a boar hunt in Poland. The melodrama is cranked up, and it updates to the 1920s, missing the novel’s entire cultural critique.”
  • Quote: “Count Olenska and his companions return from a boar hunt… there are women dancing around and sitting in his lap. And meanwhile... Ellen is making a break for it, running away with the secretary.” — Atlee [21:29]
  • Edith Wharton, alive at the time, refused to see any adaptations of her work.

• 1934 Sound Version

  • Framed by a modern (then-contemporary) conversation between Newland Archer and his grandson, Dallas.
  • Focuses on melodrama, cutting most of the secondary supporting cast and thematic depth of Wharton’s critique.
  • Quote: “It doesn’t have a very wide scope of things… marriage is the sacred whatever, and you need to blah, blah, blah.” — Atlee [29:20]
  • The stakes of social change and cultural context are glossed over in favor of bland romantic tragedy.

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2. Why Scorsese? The Road to the 1993 Film

Segment begins ~[31:00]

• Surprise and Skepticism

  • Angelina and Thomas recall being “blown away” by the film’s faithfulness and subtext.
  • Quote: “We looked at each other over and over and said, ‘This might be the best film adaptation of a book we have ever seen.’” — Angelina [33:43]

• Scorsese’s Motivation

  • Contrary to his reputation for violent gangster movies, Scorsese’s “encyclopedic love of movies” included costume dramas.
  • Given the novel by screenwriter Jay Cocks in the 1970s, Cocks said, “If you ever make a costume drama, this is you.”
  • Scorsese is drawn to the “signals and rituals” of period pieces, seeing echoes of his own Catholic upbringing and fascination with social codes.
  • Quote: “It has less to do with the costumes themselves... more to do with the climate of the times: signals, rituals, what makes us the same, what makes us different.” — Atlee relaying Scorsese [41:25]

• Influences

  • Heavily inspired by films like The Heiress, The Leopard, Magnificent Ambersons, and Visconti’s works; also “deeply attentive to the passing of old ways and old orders,” like Wharton’s novel.

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3. Artistry, Faithfulness, and Thematic Brilliance in Scorsese’s Film

Segment begins ~[46:23]

• Meticulous Attention to Detail

  • The production’s research team worked for two years to ensure period accuracy across set design, costume, art, and even handwriting.
  • Quote: “They researched which families these characters are based on and what paintings would have been on their walls. Immense detail.” — Atlee [51:02]

• Screenplay & Adaptation Choices

  • Script written in just 17 days, by Cocks and Scorsese, both working from the same paperback copy, finding their notes matched.
  • The focus was on preserving Wharton’s themes—society in transition, ritual as social code, unsaid emotions and the “violence beneath manners.”
  • Quote: “It feels like watching a film of someone who genuinely loved this and wanted to translate this art into this other medium.” — Angelina [33:56]
  • On adaptation: “This is the most violent film I've ever made.” — Martin Scorsese [16:44, as quoted by Angelina]

• Use of Narration

  • Joanne Woodward provides narration to echo Wharton’s biting, ironic voice.
  • Quote: “The narration is part of the poetry of the film… It sets the tone and atmosphere… the heartbeat.” — Cocks (via Atlee) [71:41]
  • Debate over whether the narration is “meant to be Edith Wharton”—Scorsese says it is not, but Angelina and Thomas find it crucial for conveying the book’s tone.

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4. Film Techniques and Cinematic Flourishes

Segment begins ~[73:27]

• Visual Choices

  • Bursts of color, long tracking shots (notably at the Beaufort ball), extreme close-ups on period objects and facial expressions.
  • The use of tableaux to replicate the effect of paintings, and lighting to symbolize emotional entrapment and freedom.

• Integration of Motifs and Artistic Layers

  • Frequent focus on flowers and hand-written script in titles; foregrounding motif-rich details of Wharton’s world.
  • Quote (on opening credits): “I thought, ‘He’s drawing attention to the fact that this is a novel. Let me see if he's going to film it in a way where it feels like a novel.’ And lo and behold, he did.” — Angelina [69:42]
  • Ellen’s house is shot differently to emphasize her cosmopolitan/artistic difference: “We actually linger on the paintings and see them—they’re more abstract… The fact that they took the time to do that.” — Atlee [85:13]

• Symbolism and Visual Storytelling

  • Use of shadow and lighting to depict character development and emotional distance (e.g., Ellen in shadow early on, Newland later).
  • Visual metaphors like the upside-down wedding photo to depict Newland’s psychological state: “She’s the upside down bride.” — Angelina [54:36]
  • The performance of ritual and spectacle—opera, tableaux, society as theater—are embedded in Scorsese’s framing.

• Restraint and Layered Meaning

  • Despite lavish sets, the film never feels showy. “It felt restrained… all these moving parts, but they’re just perfectly balanced.” — Angelina [72:56]

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5. Casting and Character Interpretation

Segment begins ~[57:38]

• Daniel Day Lewis as Newland Archer

  • Method-acted in period costume, stayed in Gilded Age hotel, used period shaving cream.
  • Quote: “This is not the wildest thing I’ve heard about his acting, but… he basically stayed in character.” — Atlee [59:19]
  • Successfully communicated Newland’s inner conflict, sensitivity, and repressed passion—never insipid, nor ridiculous.
  • Quote: “He did it in a way where you can tell there’s something under the surface.” — Angelina [58:14]

• Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen Olenska

  • Cast after showing range in contemporary and comedic roles. Her performance balances vulnerability, difference, and quiet strength.

• Winona Ryder as May Welland

  • Surprising choice given Ryder’s “dark horse” 90s roles; shines as the seemingly innocent but ultimately complex May.
  • Shot always among flowers, using close-ups and camera angles to heighten her psychological impact.
  • Quote: “She came off as innocent, not dumb.” — Angelina [95:16]

• Supporting Cast

  • Large ensemble featuring top British and American character actors; clever casting (e.g., Geraldine Chaplin as Mrs. Welland, echoing her own “ingenue in Dr. Zhivago” past).

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6. Faithful Adaptation: What Other Films Get Wrong

Segment throughout, esp. [85:13]

• Scorsese does not add “random scenes” or modernize dialogue/characterization, as in many botched period films or recent TV retellings (“2024 Apple TV’s The Buccaneers could not manage even correct corsets,” Angelina quips [52:02]).
• Instead, the screenplay carefully keeps every thematically-important detail, especially Wharton's motifs of ritual, restraint, and the emotional violence of social code.
• Quote: “They cut out these five significant scenes, and then you added this total random scene for God knows why—he didn’t do that.” — Angelina [87:45]

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7. Memorable Quotes and Light Bulb Moments

• On Scorsese and Violence:
  “When asked about this film, he said, ‘It is the most violent film I’ve ever made.’ ...This is the guy who did Goodfellas and Casino.” — Angelina [16:12]
• On May’s Character:
  “She came off as innocent, not dumb.” — Angelina [95:16]
• On Visual Symbolism:
  “There’s that scene where the camera does a long tracking shot around a table of guests who are perfectly still and the world is moving around them. This is a society where people are stuck and not moving.” — Angelina [76:09]
• On Fidelity to the Book:
  “Whoever wrote this script understood this book.” — Angelina [33:47]
• On Research and Detail:
  “They went to immense detail to get everything right.” — Atlee [51:02]
• On Tableau and Performance:
  “These people become paintings. He’s giving you even a sense of Wharton’s layered style—opera, literary allusion, paintings—he got that.” — Angelina [78:42]
• On Scorsese’s Approach:
  “Scorsese just proved he can make a film without any naughty words and no crime.” — Angelina [80:01]

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8. Analysis of the Final Sequence

Segment begins ~[90:55]

• The closing scene features Turner’s “Fighting Temeraire,” a perfect visual metaphor for the old order passing into shadow, just as Wharton's New York does.
• Quote: “The whole painting is old versus new, and the new is coming and the old is being lost… we could not believe that was the painting at the end.” — Angelina [90:59]

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9. Final Reflections and Recommendations

Segment near close, ~[97:51]

• The hosts concur: Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence is a one-of-a-kind film adaptation—brilliant, artful, rewatchable, and true to its source.
• Quote: “It is a masterpiece of a film.” — Angelina [79:13]
• Available to stream or rent on multiple platforms, and family appropriate (“It could be rated PG. All the conversations are coded.” — Angelina [97:13])

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Notable Timestamps of Interest

• Introduction and banter: [00:18–14:54]
• Commonplace Quotes: [14:54–18:10]
• Silent/1934 Film History: [18:10–31:00]
• Scorsese Background & Adaptation Approach: [31:00–48:02]
• Artistic & Technical Analysis of the 1993 Film: [48:02–90:54]
• Closing Thoughts and Recommendations: [97:50–99:23]

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Tone and Language

• The conversation is witty, erudite, and self-aware—with much affectionate ribbing, literary passion, and cinematic geekery. The hosts blend close reading with film analysis and personal anecdotes, evoking the atmosphere of a cozy (if occasionally raucous!) literary salon.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode:

This episode is an essential listen or read for anyone interested in the intersection of classic literature and film. The hosts unravel not just the history of The Age of Innocence on screen, but also what’s at stake when great literature is brought to life visually. Scorsese’s adaptation emerges as a touchstone for fidelity, restraint, and interpretive genius, setting a new standard in literary cinema.

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(Skip to ~[33:43], [46:23], [73:27], and [97:51] if you want the hosts’ most excited and perceptive praise for Scorsese’s film, and deeper technical and thematic discussion.)

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Transcript

[A]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome. Welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and here with me today is not only the increasingly less mysterious Mr. Banks. Hello, Mr. Banks, ma'.

[B]

Am.

[A]

But the boy wonder of film himself, Allie Northhor Ali. Welcome back.

[B]

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

[A]

Is it insulting for me to call you the boy Wonder? You're not a child, you're a man.

[B]

I'm a man? Yeah. No, that's not insulting.

[A]

You're in your 30s now, but like you. But Boy Wonder, just like, you know, my fearless sidekick.

[B]

Oh, I'm eternally youthful.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Let's keep it there.

[A]

That's exactly what it is. You. You nailed it. Today, guys, we are going to talk about the Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton on film. And as usual, Atlee has done a ton of research, found the most obscure silent film for Doug. The, the, shall we say, the Dark Web. I mean, the darkest corners of the Internet.

[B]

No, for, for legal purposes. I did not go on the Dark Web.

[A]

Went to legal per. Legal places on the Internet. But you scoured the Internet and you found these films. And I am, I'm actually, we are really excited to talk about this film and I don't want to like spoil it skipping ahead, but you might be surprised by what Mr. Banks and I thought of all of this. So this is today's episode. But first, before we do that, just a quick reminder that this is a member supported podcast. We don't accept ads. And so if you would like to keep this podcast going, head over to Patreon and become a supporter and join our amazing community over on Discord. You can also support this podcast as well as support your own continuing education by checking out the things we've got going on at the House of Humane Letters. So once again, as we've mentioned before, we've got Ella Hornstra's mini class on the grammar of the natural world. And that is going to be running on Mondays in September. And she's been giving me a sneak peek. And guys, this is going to be one of those serious paradigm shifting mini classes. I just. Wow. I'm. I, I can't even. With the, with the offerings we've been having lately, like just this one amazing thing after another. And, and just in case you're saying to yourself everything she promotes, she says is amazing. That's not because I'm lying. It's because as the boss, I only choose to do the things that I think are amazing. You. You would be surprised the, the, the number of things that I shoot down when people say, hey, I'd like to do a webinar on cutting my toenails. I say, hey, that sounds great and very informative, but I'm gonna have to say no. So I'm not just a hype man. I really do bring to you the things that I think are going to be the most helpful. So Ella Hornish's webinar as well as Dr. Michael Self, still. Pinch me, pinch me. I cannot believe we have him working with us now. Notice I didn't say for us. Prepositions matter. He's not working for me. He's working with me. His webinar on the Vikings, as you've heard me talk about in the last few weeks. So you. That's going to be in September as well. So go over to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com click on that mini class webinar tab and check out what we've got going there. But the reason I have quickly gone through those is because we have two brand new announcements. Very, very exciting announcements. One is a project that has been going on. What is it for the last. I think it's the last 12 months. It's, I think it's a year ago that Jason Baxter talked to me about, hey, I want to do an audiobook. And then he said something like, I think I can have it out by Lent. Here we are in August, at the end of August, actually, this is going to drop in September. It's now September. And even if you don't know the church calendar, I'm pretty sure you know September as well.

[C]

But Baxter, we've decided, is a genius. And geniuses like the state of Hawaii kind of have their own.

[A]

Absolutely, absolutely. He's on Jason time. He actually, the, the major delay wasn't even his fault. It's just, it turns out we keep learning as we go. It turns out that to make an audiobook is a lot of work, and he actually did the recordings quite early on in the year. It just. The back end of engineering took a long time, as well as dealing with Amazon, which we would never, ever publicly say anything negative about, lest they remove our store from their website again for legal purposes. So, yes, you're hearing it right now. Jason Baxter's why Literature Still Matters is available on Audible, read by the author. And I could not be more thrilled about this. And I. I started listening. Wow. It is. It's so good.

[B]

It sounds amazing. It sounds such a good job.

[A]

It really sounds good. The audio quality is amazing. Plus, just Jason, right? Like, every time he does a webinar for us or even a podcast, Tom and I are both just like. It's like he hypnotizes us with his voice. It's like he could do a meditation app for us. Yeah, he could do a meditation app.

[C]

Dangerous, though, if you turned it on while you were driving.

[A]

Like. Like, I really could listen to him read the phone book. And I kind of chuckled because when I started listening to the audiobook, I was like, yep, this is. This is how he talks. This is. This is it. This is how he talks in his classes and this how he talks on the phone. And no, it's. He's done a great job. And I was really excited when he wanted to do the audiobook because for me, particularly for this book, which is, as he says, you know, it's. It's literary criticism slash travelogue. Like, it's just so great to hear his voice, to hear his personality come through as he's sharing the various anecdotes that he does in the book. You know, he's just. He really is a genius. I. I will give a shout. And again, Angelina thinks everybody she publishes is a genius. I've only published one. And he's a genius. Correct. I only publish geniuses, but. Oh, are you kidding? This. This project has just been amazing. And his. His ability to present very complex ideas in a really, really accessible way. And not just accessible way, but, like, it feels like you're just sitting on his porch sipping some tea, you know, his Arkansas boy coming out, and. Oh, it's just fantastic. So, yeah, even if you already own the book, if you're like me, if I really like it, I own the book and the audiobook because I like to have it playing in the car or when I'm taking a walk. And this will be well worth your time. So, yes, if you're already an audible Subscriber, you probably have already discovered it and already used your credit on it. But if you're not an Audible subscriber, you can go to our website, cassiodoruspress.com because we have a special deal for you. If you use our affiliate link, you can sign on to Amazon for a free 30 day trial and they will give you Jason Baxter's book for free, no strings attached. If you decide to stick around because you're enjoying Audible, then that throws a few more shekels our way. But, but Amazon is providing this free of char storage as, as a promotion. So if you don't have an Audible account and, and you think you want to get one to get Jason's book for free, please use our affiliate link and help the tiny, tiny, tiny, small publisher who's finding it very difficult to navigate in the world of expensive publishing. All right, so that, that's a, that's a really exciting announcement and, and I know Jason feels so relieved to be, to be done with that and it was just really, he should be proud of himself. It was an absolutely fantastic project. One more cool thing that a lot of people have requested over the years, guys, we designed Atlee and I as well as Emily Rabel, shout out to her. She did a lot of legwork on this. We designed a brand new literary life podcast. Hand thrown ceramic mug. And y', all, it is gorgeous. Atlee, they can't hear you shouting with your hands up like that. You got, use your words.

[B]

I just didn't want to hurt anybody's ears, but this is, it's, it's beautiful.

[A]

It is so beautiful. I am so proud of it. It is absolutely gorgeous. And you guys need to understand I'm very particular about my ceramic mugs, as my husband can attest. It's got to be the right shape, the right color, it's got to have a good handle, a good weight, you know, all the things. And I wanted something because I do have a massive ceramic coffee collection. And if you ever come to my house for coffee, part of my ritual is that I open the cabinet and allow you to pick your pick which one is your favorite.

[B]

As that it is a little overwhelming.

[A]

There you go. Pick which one is your favorite because you know, it's like, it's like that scene at the end of the which, which is the Indiana Jones the Last Crusader. Yes. Is it Last Crusader? You choose wisely. Like, you know, like your life hangs balance when you choose your coffee mug at my house. But I wanted something that would look a little different And I think we, I think we did. I think it's beautiful and different and the, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive because we let our Patreon members have a sneak peek and get their order in first. But if you missed that announcement, if you missed the newsletter, if you missed all of our social media announcements, you're hearing it now. So here's the deal with this mug. It is a limited run and we are cutting off orders for it. Midnight, September 21st, Eastern Time. This is it. This is your one shot. If you want a mug, go and order it. They are handmade and so we have to get our order in, get it to the maker, and then they will be shipped out to you in November. And we are doing our absolute best to make sure they get into your hands in plenty of time for Christmas. If you have a podcast fan in your life, this would make a fantastic Christmas gift.

[C]

Can I add my own little sales pitch?

[A]

Oh, by all means.

[C]

We're shamelessly advertising our wares. I really think that this is a well designed mug and I'm the kind of person who like, does not care what kind of mug. I drink out of it all. Actually, it's, it's funny because I've actually shamed you in front of guests who have stayed with us.

[A]

This is correct.

[C]

When I've given them a mug you do not think is adequately.

[A]

This is correct. I'm out of their hands and I'm like, I'm like, what back corner of our.

[C]

Did you find this, you know, world's best Latin teacher, you know, ironic novelty mug. And you think that's just so embarrassing. The weird thing, things that you'll never think you're going to shame your spouse for. I've never worn like white socks with black shoes in public. That I have given the wrong mug.

[A]

You have. And yes, so he knows how source.

[C]

Of some tension in our marriage.

[A]

It's the only source of digit true. I walk in the, in the kitchen and I see our guest sipping on and frankly an inferior mug. And I think with the 1500 handmade local artisans mugs that we have here, you just gave them a Walmart special that I use to, you know, when the sink is leaking, I stick it under the. No, not that bad. I exactly.

[C]

Things I just don't think about.

[A]

That's because, you know, you have too many brilliant thoughts going on in your head to focus on what coffee mug you're drinking on.

[C]

We'll say that.

[A]

So that means that even Mr. Banks thinks it's beautiful. I'm really proud of it. So if you're thinking, where can I get this? All right, we're actually selling it through the Casiodorus Press website. But if you can't remember that, you really can. Just go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com on the homepage. You're going to see a graphic with the mug. You can click on it, and it will take you to the Casiodorus website.

[B]

You can't miss it.

[A]

And that is because we already have our warehouse and our distributor and our entire shipping process set up through that website. And it took so long to get that functioning, there was no way I was going to try to replicate it on the House of Humane Letters website. So it will be through the Casiodorus Press website. So go over there, buy Jason's book, and pre order your mug. All right, so lots of announcements now. You ready to start this podcast, guys?

[C]

At long last? Yes.

[A]

I hope so, Ali. The next time you come on the podcast to talk about a movie, we will all have our Lit Life coffee mugs.

[B]

Oh, and I will be drinking so much tea from that mug during the whole podcast. I can't wait.

[A]

Me, too. I'm excited. I'm so excited to see all of my students when I go on camera, having their mug, we're all gonna have mugs. You don't want to be left out, guys. You don't want to be. You know, you're the one person who's going, wait, where'd y' all get those mugs? Too late. They're gone.

[B]

All right, the FOMO is real.

[A]

The FOMO will definitely be real. I'll just, you know, Thomas won't notice. I'll just take his and put it on ebay to the highest bidder.

[B]

Used unwashed mug used by Thomas Bates.

[A]

Maybe I could get more. If I say Thomas bakes, I substituted it with a paper cup, and he didn't notice.

[C]

Collect drinking vessels that belong to literary celebrities or were used by.

[A]

They have been given to me.

[C]

I should say given to you. But you do keep them in privileged places.

[A]

Yes, I do. Right over there.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. But, you know, people are dying now. They're going to want to know who.

[C]

By the way, this is another source of tension in our marriage. You know, the mug is one thing, but your used wine glass is another. You don't have to go into that right now, though. But if you know, you know, if.

[A]

You know, you know, we'll talk about. I will show you said wine glass at the Patreon event this Week all fellows. Eve. Because yes, if that was jealousy you heard in my husband's voice, he may be jealous of a 90 something year old author whose wine glass I have. There's a story there, as you can imagine. I will tell it at all. Fellows. Eve. Right, okay.

[B]

It's a good one.

[A]

It's. I married you, though I didn't marry the 90 year old author.

[C]

As Othello says, I loved not wisely, but too well.

[A]

Okay, commonplace quotes. Mr. Banks, why'd you get us started?

[C]

Actually, mine is about marriage, believe it or not. Brilliant segue, Ms. Stanford, whether you intended it or not.

[A]

Listen, go outside over the Patreon because we need money for marriage counseling. Obviously we need it. Send your donations. Go ahead.

[C]

This is a wonderfully terse quote from Napoleon, who is usually not a man of few words. He actually talked a lot, he wrote a lot. I mean, we have mini volumes of his letters, his journals and correspondence and all that kind of thing. So we know what he thought about people, what his general set of attitudes and prejudices were. Once. When he was in exile on the island of St. Helena, when he was in last years of his life, one of his aides or officers in attendance asked him what he had learned from his marriage to Josephine, which, by the way, I think must have been kind of a daring question to ask the emperor in exile.

[A]

I understand the heart, my heart right now, as you're about to quote Napoleon.

[C]

Marriage. Okay. So what marriage to Josephine had taught him. And he simply said, I generally had to give in. That was, that was what marriage had taught him. I generally have to give in.

[A]

I love everything about that. Like the world's most fierce military leader in the world.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

He gave in on those battles.

[C]

He gave in.

[A]

He gave in.

[C]

Some battles are not to be fought.

[A]

Okay, all right, I've got, I've got. I've also got a short pithy quote. This will shock everyone. And it even has a small backstory of the backstory. So I'm channeling my. Mr. Banks. I was doing some reading on Morton Scorsese and, and the film version of the Age of Innocence, and I ran across this quote which is just too great not to share. When asked about this film, he said, it is the most violent film I've ever made. Well, we're just gonna, just gonna leave that there. We'll come back. Mind you, this is the guy who did Goodfellas and Casino and Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver.

[B]

Beating streets, Raging ball.

[A]

Yeah, but, but this, this is the most violent film I like.

[B]

I Did I did come across that in my research. I wasn't sure. Sure if I was gonna share that or not.

[A]

It's just too good. It's too good. All right, atli, what you got for us?

[B]

All right, so mine is also kind of shorter and pithier. I started Frank Capra's autobiography. It's called the name above the title. And when I say start, I mean, I read the foreword by John Ford and I read the epigraph, and I fell asleep. So I haven't really gotten very far into the book yet, but the epigraph was really, really interesting. So still, it didn't put me to sleep. I was just exhausted from watching Martin Scorsese movies all week.

[A]

Allie really, like, he channeled his college days. He just threw himself in. He had a deadline, and he was like, I have seven days to become an expert.

[B]

Every night was an all nighter. It was fine. Everything's fine. So the quote is, there are no rules in filmmaking, only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness.

[A]

Nice mic drop.

[C]

I like that.

[A]

That's good.

[B]

Some good stuff.

[A]

That's good. All right, well, before we talk about Martin Scorsese, Ali is going to take us on a tour of the history of the Age of Innocence in film. So get us started off with the very first one, 1924. So this book comes out in 1921, so we're talking almost instant.

[B]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Just immediately after. They probably bought the rights to the book before it was even published.

[A]

Okay. So I got to tell you this because I read this today. The first two Age of Innocence films were made during Edith Wharton's lifetime, and she refused to go see either one of them.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Which. I love you, Edith. I love you so much.

[B]

I would love it if we just had some kind of reaction video from her, like, in the theater as she, like, you know, we forced her to sit down and watch these movies and get her opinions because they are interesting to say the least.

[A]

Okay. But in her defense, in case anybody's saying, you know, how dare you? This is the early days of film. And she just didn't think film could do what it needed to do.

[B]

No, at this point, it was. It was still. It was becoming more prominent, but it was still kind of associated with being like a sideshow attraction. You know, people going to like.

[A]

Not high art.

[B]

No, not at all.

[A]

Right, all right, so take us. All right. 1924, the first age of innocence.

[B]

Yeah. 1924 is the first screen adaptation we have of this book, but it's the Third book of Edith Wharton's that had been turned into a movie. The first two.

[A]

She was a hot property then.

[B]

Yeah, she was. The first was the House of Mirth. And then after that was Glimpses of the Moon. And then after that, Age of Innocence was in production. So I don't know if I've said this before in other episodes, but there. The majority of silent films that were created during this time are now considered lost, either due to disintegration of the film stock, lack of preservation, or sometimes people just. There are stories of people selling film stock of, like, old movies and melting them down to be turned into, like. Like women's shoe heels. So it's.

[C]

Yeah, it's metaphor there, I think.

[B]

Yeah. Somewhere in there. Yeah. So this Age of Innocence film is. Is also lost. And we do have a couple of production shots, stills from the movie. I found one set of costume sketches. And after I did some digging, I found on the Library of Congress website a copy of the script that was submitted from Warner Brothers to the.

[A]

Not on the Dark Web.

[B]

Not on the Dark Web. It's fully legit, I promise. So it was a script that they had submitted for copyright purposes. It's a little hard to read. I can send the. The link to everybody so they can read it if they want to. It is a wild ride. I'll just put that out there. It starts off. First of all, I think it. I think they've updated it to take place in the modern day, so in the 20s, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the novel in the first place. It opens with After a boar hunt in. In Poland, the first title card.

[A]

Clearly not concerned about the loss of the old ways. That was not. They must just done straight up love triangle.

[B]

Absolutely. After days and nights in the wilderness. Wilderness of the Polish steppes, Count Olenska and his companions return from a boar hunt. There are women dancing around and sitting in his lap. And. And meanwhile there's. There's like an empty chair off at the other end of the table where Ellen is supposed to be sitting. Then we cut to her upstairs and she's making a break for it. She's running away with the secretary. It's very melodramatic. Very, very much of the time. For as far as movies of that time go, it's. It completely just ignores the. The whole idea of what the book is supposed to be about. Also with the ending. You know, we have that ending where Newland and Dallas are going to Europe and he sits down in the street and looks up at the window and never sees her. They cut that part out completely. So it ends with May telling. Telling Newland that she's expecting a baby after they've. They've just watched Ellen go on a boat back to Europe. And that's. That's where it ends. Just kind of a really sad note and just completely got it wrong. I wish we still had this movie. I would totally.

[A]

It's a silent film.

[B]

It's a silent film. Yeah. There was some dialogue. It was kind of full of little funny little quips and antics. Like Granny Minget, she's, like, reading a. Like a quote, naughty French novel when Newman walks in and she has to hide the book in, like, the folds of her skirt. And then when she, like, stands up or something, it falls out and she's embarrassed. It just makes no sense at all. And I loved it. Oh, my gosh. Anyway, yeah, so I'll make sure to share the link to that. The. The PDF where people can read it. It is very hard to read. It looks like somebody mimeographed it on a tissue paper. So do it that. What you will after. So after that, it's about 10 years until we have another adaptation. 1934.

[A]

Okay, so before you tell us about that one, can you put that one in the context when we looked at the. When we did the Pride and Prejudice episode, was there. Was it a 1930s pride and prej that we looked at?

[B]

That was the. The one with Lawrence Olivier. Yeah, that was 39, I think.

[A]

39 or 40.

[C]

Huxley wrote.

[A]

Right. Okay. I guess I'm just thinking that the 1930s really liked doing book adaptations. There's also Wuthering Heights. Comes out in 39. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

Darcy and.

[A]

And Heathcliff.

[C]

In the same calendar year.

[A]

Yep. Came out the same year as Gone with the Window.

[B]

I wish he was in this. That would have made it better.

[A]

All right, so this is five years before that. So this is five years before Gone with the Wind comes out, which is like. I think of that as modern filmmaking.

[B]

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's. That's when 39 is considered the best year of movies.

[A]

Wizard of Oz, too.

[B]

Yeah. Wizard of Oz stage Technicolor film to.

[A]

Be found anywhere after that. You know, I read that they don't make. I did not realize this. They don't make movies in Technicolor anymore because it's too expensive.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, if there's a couple of variations of Technicolor. So with the wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, it was It's a three color Technicolor. There used to be a two color. So three color. It's three strips of film that are different colors that have different filters on them that are being filmed at the same time. So the camera was massive and you had to have, like, a special technician to come in and operate it. There weren't very many cameras at all in existence. So, I mean, the fact that people barely use film anymore, it. Yeah. So Technicolor's kind of gone away. It's still like a company like Technicolor is still. I think they switched gears to do something else as far as film coloring goes. But, yeah, we don't have Technicolor anymore.

[A]

All right. 1934.

[B]

Yeah, 1934. RKO made this version. John Bowles, played new on Archer. I'd never heard of him before, but that doesn't mean anything. But the most notable actress in this movie was Irene Dunne. She's kind of known for being in things with, like, Cary Grant and more. More romantic movies. So this was kind of right up.

[C]

Her alley, was a big name in the day.

[B]

Oh, absolutely.

[A]

Recognize the name?

[B]

Yeah. They actually were talking about having Katharine Hepburn play Ellen Olenska for a little while. I don't know how that worked.

[C]

I can imagine that. Actually. I could imagine her in that role now.

[A]

When did she do Little Women? Was that the 30s, too?

[B]

Yeah, little Women, I think, was right before this.

[A]

Okay, so. Yeah. Okay. So they. So she had just done a very young. A literature.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Movie. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

This was. This was before she was considered kind of box office.

[C]

It would be interesting if she had been in that and Little Women, because in the 90s, a Winona rider, that would have been.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, well spotted.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Marriage saved.

[B]

Yeah. So this one does a bit of a better job. Again, it's hard to judge the silent version because we don't actually.

[A]

So you watched this one?

[B]

I watched this one, yes. Yes, I did. So this one starts. It starts in modern day, in the 30s. And it has this kind of montage of, like, crazy, like, bright flashing lights and hectic life in New York City and murders and gangs and things like that. And then we follow a taxi where Dallas Archer is riding with his grandfather, Newland Archer. So Dallas is not the son in this one, he's the grandson. Dallas is in a similar relationship with a married woman. And he basically gets him into the back of the taxi and says, well, grandfather, won't you tell me about the time that you were seeing a married woman? Since we all know about it. I mean, that is genuinely no tact. No tact whatsoever. But that's seriously how they talk in this movie. So once he. Once Newland starts telling the story, there's like a shot where we're looking at the spinning tires of a taxi, and it kind of fades to, like, carriage wheels instead, and it kind of pans out and. Or backs out, and we sort of see the. We've stepped back in time.

[A]

I'm sorry, I'm just imagining that scene in, like, my 1930s voice. Like, look here, Grandpa, look. See, I got some trouble with abroad.

[B]

You joke, but that's pretty much what it was. Yeah. So when they do. They have this. This framing device. So they put this at the beginning and then at the end when they're supposed to be going to Europe and seeing the Countess instead. It's. It's basically like Newland's been telling the story this whole time, and Dallas is saying, well, I've been keeping you in this cab for way longer than. We've passed this park like, six times. And it's because the Countess is back in New York. She's come home for a party, whatever. And so they go to her, like, apartment building in. In New York. It's. It's ridiculous, but they. You know, it has the same ending where he's waiting outside. And I don't know why they kept him in New York, but. So this movie is less about. As far as adaptation goes. You know, the book is. Is about the changing of societies and the end of civil, like, end of societies. And this is kind of more focused on the importance of marriage and how it relates to. To a society. They just. They keep talking about, well, marriage is a sacred, you know, whatever. It's. It's. Marriage is this, and you need to blah, blah, blah. And it's. It's very much centered on the two characters, New and Ellen. It's. It's. It doesn't have a very wide scope of things, so you don't even have characters like Lawrence Lefferts or Search and Jackson. Like, a lot of these outside people have been kind of deleted, I guess, for. For time's sake. It's kind of a short movie. It's only an hour and 20 minutes. So they had to do a lot of. A lot of cutting. Even May. May is barely in the movie at all. She's only in there when it's kind of important to the plot. So it's clear that they wanted the audience to feel kind of just distressed and sad that Ellen and new and can't get together. It's very melodramatic. Very melodramatic. If I never hear the words, we can't go on like this. It'll be too late. I don't know how many times they said that in the movie, but it was a lot. Yeah, there. I mean, there was. I have a lot of snarky notes about it, but I don't think I need to read all of these out loud.

[A]

So we can just wait 60 years for another film version. Does it show up anywhere else? Television?

[B]

No, not really. Not that I could find. There are a lot of Edith Wharton adaptations, but Age of Innocence, this is pretty much interest. Yeah. Okay. I think there's something in the works. There might be a mini series in the works in the future, but, yeah, this is pretty much all we've got.

[A]

All right. So before we kind of jump into Age of Innocence, though, I. I do want to sort of give us some context here, because I remember when this came out and being extremely surprised that this was a Martin Scorsese film.

[B]

I think. You and the whole world.

[A]

Me and. Me and the whole world. So if you've been following this podcast for a while, if you heard our other episodes that we've done on film adaptations, you know that Mr. Banks and I are hard to please. We're hard to please. We go in with.

[C]

I think I have very reasonable taste, actually. You can speak for yourself, Ms. Stanford.

[A]

I also think I'm reasonable. We both have very reasonable taste.

[B]

We're dipping into the marriage counseling here already, guys.

[A]

No, this is not a conflict, Atley. This is something we completely see eye to eye on. We have ex.

[C]

We have exacting standards. I think that's entirely fair to say that we do.

[A]

And both of us experience a lot of frustration when we watch adaptations because we both find ourselves thinking, did you even read the book? Do you have even any idea what this book was about? Well, it is kind of like what you were describing with the 1920s. You just took the characters and then did a completely different story. And that isn't to say that we expect everything to be exactly the same. It isn't to say that we don't expect that the director will be translating a book to film. And. And. And that's different. And film does different things. And, I mean, we talked about some of the changes in the BBC Pride and Prejudice that I thought were actually very thematically appropriate to the book. So it's not like either one of us are expecting it to be shot for Shot the book. Okay, but. But we're typically disappointed, I guess I should say we're typically disappointed and frustrated and think, are there no English professors you could have called? You don't know anybody who could have told you what this book is about? And so often like, okay, like think of a movie that came out at a very similar time to this with some of the same cast. Was Dracula, right?

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Okay. And we did an episode on that and Dracula was just awful. It was awful. Okay. Called it Bram Stoker's Dracula. And like, nothing but the characters names were the same. It was just like, what do you. Bram Stoker, you know, via Francis Ford Coppola.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So with that as the background, I have to say that we put on Age of Innocence and looked at each other over and over and said, this might be the best film adaptation of a book we have ever seen. We were completely blown away. And I'm excited to talk about, you know, what exactly we liked and to.

[C]

Hear you explain by just the sheer fidelity of it, so faithful.

[A]

And I, and I gotta tell you over and over, I said to him, whoever wrote this script understood this book.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Because they picked all of the significant scenes, all the significant quotes. I mean, and I can. I can quibble when I'm watching and so can you, Mr. Banks. And. But we just kept saying, yes, yes, yes, yes, that you notice this important theme. Yes. That you notice this important recurring image. Just like somebody. It felt like watching a film of someone who genuinely loved this and wanted to translate this art into this other medium. And just the attention to detail, the faithfulness, just, wow, can I share my personal history?

[C]

So I was especially surprised to enjoy it as much as I did because I had not seen it since I was very young. I saw it when I was middle school aged. It was one of those films my parents showed me.

[B]

Right.

[C]

I think they had probably seen it in the theater. And I knew who Martin Scorsese was at this point when I'm maybe 11 or whatever, because we had. I had seen Goodfellas by that point. One or two of us, the more Scorsese and Scorsese films you think of. And you know, my parents put this on, I'm like, okay, so this is by Martin Scorsese and it's set in New York. So. And then we start watching this and there's no, like Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro putting hits out on anyone. And there's no.

[A]

Ulin doesn't say, I'm not here to amuse you.

[C]

Am I here to amuse? Yeah. So I was gravely. I was violently disappointed by this film not even having one mafia killing in it. And I wrote it out for years, and I was.

[A]

Well, there were mafia killings, but they were done. They were done with a smile.

[C]

Yeah. I had to grow up. Yes, exactly. So I'm glad. I'm glad I did.

[A]

But. And you loved it?

[C]

Oh, yeah. I very much enjoyed it. I would like to see it again.

[A]

Yeah. And we took our time. We watched it over two nights. We kept pausing and talking about it.

[C]

Talked about this movie together several times, I think, but we just hadn't done it for some reason.

[A]

And I thought that I had seen it. But then as we watched it, I thought, thought, maybe I've never seen this before.

[B]

Well, to be fair, I've seen it before, maybe a year ago. And when I was watching it again, I was like, I don't remember any of this being so good. It might just be different.

[C]

I looked up its box office returns. This was a profitable movie at the time.

[B]

And I was thinking, you could never.

[C]

Market this as a theatrical release today.

[B]

No, not without some major changes, series.

[C]

Like, you know, the Gilded Age or something like that. But you couldn't sell this to the theaters, Right?

[A]

Right. Yeah. So did you love it?

[B]

Oh, absolutely. I've watched it three times now.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

I've got it on in the background just in case I forget something. It's just. It's just playing on my iPad. No, I absolutely loved it. And it kind of led me down a Scorsese rabbit hole to kind of fill in the gaps of my film knowledge.

[A]

Okay, I. I am just dying to hear the story from you of how this film comes to be made. Actor.

[B]

Okay, here we go. This is straight from the horse's mouth. So at this point, at the. At the point where they were in pre production, Martin Scorsese was making Raging Bull. I think he was finishing up Raging Bull. And in his filmography, he was mostly at this point, known for his more physically violent movies, so. Like Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and Raging Bull and a few others. I don't think he had made Casino at this point, but. So he was friends with a screenwriter, Jay Cox, and they found out they had this mutual love of what they call costume dramas. And so Jay Cox gave him a copy of the Age of Innocence, I think he said, in the 70s. And he said to Scorsese, he said, if you ever make a costume drama, this is you. Because he felt like he could understand the nuances and the different elements, a lot better than any other director could.

[A]

Now, Mr. Banks, who. What did we just watch that had the screenwriter, Jay Cox, and you caught that when we were watching the film the other night. You said, oh, hero.

[B]

Was it the Bob Dylan movie?

[C]

Yes, that was it.

[A]

Yes, it was the Bob Dylan movie.

[C]

Chalamet.

[A]

Well done. Well done. Finale.

[C]

What do you say today?

[B]

I know my research.

[A]

All right. I mean, first of all, I'm just blown away right here. I'm blown away at the thought that Martin Scorsese likes costume dramas.

[B]

I know. Who would have thought and that some.

[A]

In the 1970s, that somebody's like, hey, I read this Age of Innocence, and this is just screaming you.

[B]

I thought of you immediately.

[A]

Yeah. Like, just, wow. Just goes to show, though, that people are more multi dimensional than we think they are.

[B]

Oh, yeah. I mean, if you're making something because you know it'll make money and you know you're good at it, like, people have a tendency to stay in that lane. But Scorsese kind of floats around a little bit and he's not scared to experiment with different things. He talks a lot about. In. In multiple interviews, he talks about how when he was growing up, he wasn't really able to do, like, a lot of sports and like, things that young boys were able to do because he had asthma. So his parents would take him to the movies all the time. And he. If you know anything about Martin Scorsese, you know, he has like, an encyclopedic knowledge of film. Like, he watches the most obscure things. He's now on. He's a part of the advisory board for Turner Classic Movies, and he has his own film preservation foundation, I think. So he loves movies. So it's not really. If you know that. It's not really. It's actually, it's still surprising. He likes costume dramas. He talks about the Heiress, the movie with Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Cliff. He talks about that a lot, being a huge influence on him.

[C]

If I can cut in the Heiress, for anyone who has not heard of, this is based on Henry James's novel Washington Square. And Henry James, as we've already said, was a great friend of Edith Wharton.

[A]

So this would be his opportunity to do something like that.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

He also talks about the films of Visconti. And I've only seen part of a Visconti movie before, but there's a movie with, I think it's Burt Lancaster called the Leopard. And he. They talk about like, this is. This is Scorsese's Leopard, basically, that's actually.

[C]

A really good comparison because the Leopard is a story about a Sicilian nobleman at a time when Italy is going through its revolution and getting rid of a lot of its nobility. And he's. He's sort of consciously watching the last days of the era that he has lived through and fully knows it as well, and knows there's really nothing he can do about it. So, yeah, both the novel by Giuseppe Lampedusa, which we've talked about with Jason on the podcast here, and the film by Visconti, are classics of their kind.

[A]

In fact, I have to say I bought the Leopard on audible yesterday because Mr. Banks kept saying, I think you would love this book.

[C]

Another director, actually, it's one that surprised me who said that the Leopard is the film that made him want to direct movies, is Clint Eastwood, evidently.

[B]

Really?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Another shocker.

[C]

Scorsese.

[A]

I want to go back for a second to Morton Scorsese's love of costume drama because you have a quote up here on your notes, and I want you. I don't want us to miss this quote from Scorsese about why he's drawn to costume dramas, because I find that extremely fascinating, what he's going to say here.

[B]

Yeah. So he says about his love of costume dramas that it has less to do with the costumes themselves and more to do with the climate of the times. So he likes to think about signals and rituals and how they're different from what we experience today, how we are expected to behave and what constitutes things like love and marriage and what makes us the same.

[A]

I love that because that, that is very much my own experience when like, like my love of Downton Abbey. Okay, like, and I do like Downton Abbey, so don't take this too harshly. But it's not for its riveting storylines because it can cross. It can cross over into soap opera. But the things that Downton Abbey does well are the signals and rituals. And I watch it thinking, oh, you can see the slow change over time and this little thing or that little thing. And, and I really appreciate when that's well done, when it's not well done. I'm angry because everybody's just, you know, in a, in 1920s America acting like they're in the 2000s. I'm like, Ah, you know, do your research there, buddy.

[C]

Material, background of the story they're telling is very well put together.

[A]

Yes. And in fact, so that's been one of the big criticisms. We talked in the podcast about the 1995 Edith Wharton, the Buccaneers that was done On Masterpiece Theater, which I thought was really good at the time. And we should watch that, Mr. Banks. But it's been recently redone on Apple TV. And I tried to watch it. I could not get through 10 minutes of the first episode. It was horrible. And I started reading about it and that was. Its whole thing is it's right now just in old fashioned costumes.

[B]

I mean, that's any. Any period drama right now, any period movie, like.

[A]

And they played it up, you know, modern soundtrack, modern slang. And it was very intentional on their part. And I gotta say, I'm with Scorsese on this. For me, what's interesting is being taken out of my world and being able to walk around and, you know, almost literally put myself in somebody else's shoes or corset. Put myself in someone else's corset and walk around and. And just see what it was, you know, I'm like fascinated with scenes in the kitchen. Like, show me how you made a cake on an open fire. You know, like, just all of that stuff is fascinating to me.

[C]

Food in this film was very.

[A]

Almost a character, right?

[B]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's used as sort of like a time clock too at some points where, like, the shuffling. Shuffling courses are like, used to kind of progress the scenes without having to cut away to anything else. There was that basket of turtles that kind of, I know, like broke my heart.

[C]

Languishes on everything that it. That it touches on.

[A]

Yes, we'll get to that. So let's keep going. Let's talk about his influences and then we can just all ooh and ah over every thought.

[B]

Yeah, so he also. I thought I was. I thought I came up with this first, but I guess I didn't. Scorsese said in another interview that he felt a connection to the story not only because of his love for the genre, like period costumes and things like that, but also his Catholic upbringing, he thought was a major influence. So the ritual of mass and benedictions and confirmation. He says every move has a specific meaning and forms a structure. And the same could be said of the Age of Innocence and the time period. It takes place in every interaction. Every daily task has a meaning and a purpose. And he said that even, you know, place card placement has meaning and purpose for the story.

[A]

That's really interesting. We both thought that was so well done. Just the attention to small details was amazing. And it's really funny because I now know after my reading this morning that some critics complained about this attention to detail. And now we need to dox them Right here on the air. Home addresses for something you said in 1993. It's coming back to get you now, homeschool.

[C]

Moms will burn down your.

[A]

The truth will out. New York Times. The truth will out. But it sounds like Scorsese has that kind of attention to detail in other areas. Like if he's. If he's self aware about his Catholic life and thinking, okay, all of these rituals, we do have this meaning that definitely comes through in the film that he understood that all of those things were significant. And so what about any other big films? I know Mr. Banks read that one of the big films that influenced Age of Innocence was Orson Welles, the Magnificent Ambersons.

[B]

Yes, I do have a list, and I can send that out as well.

[A]

Yeah, we can put that in the show notes.

[B]

Yeah. But as far as. They mostly talked about the films of Jean Renoir, Visconti, the Heiress. He also talks about Black Narcissus was a. Was a big, big influence on him. Magnificent Ambersons. And Barry Lyndon was actually, as far as narration goes, like Scorsese, if, you know, he's a very big fan of narration. He doesn't see anything wrong with it.

[A]

We talked about that, that he uses a lot of. Use of narrators.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In his films.

[B]

Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with it. When we were screenwriting classes, they would tell us no. No narration and no flashbacks.

[A]

Yeah. Well, his success would say otherwise.

[B]

I don't think that's all of his movies. Seriously. Every movie. Every movie he does has narration.

[A]

Interesting thing about the magnificent Ambersons. When Mr. Banks told me this, I instantly saw the connection. So Magnificent Ambersons is going to win the Pulitzer, what, two years after Age of Innocence?

[C]

Yeah, I think. I think Booth Tarkington won the Pulitzer.

[B]

Key book.

[A]

That's right. So Magnificent. You're right. So Magnificent ambersons wins in 1920. Age of innocent in 1922. And then Booth Tarkington's Alice Adams in 1922. So we go, 20, 21, 22. He bookends her. But what's fascinating is, and I love the Magnificent Ambersons, and one day we will do it on this podcast. That whole trilogy is just amazing. But it is very much about the passing away of an old time and. And this new world. So it's thematically very, very similar, although a different vibe. It's a different. It's a different vibe tribe. Because he. Because, well, I mean, she does do technology, like, with the telephone and stuff, but he. He. He does a lot with the car culture and the way that. That creates that kind of suburban spread because now you're moving further away from town because you have a car. And anyway, I digress. But I. I could see. I could see the whole magnificent Amberson's vibe going on here.

[B]

Okay, well, then he did a good job, I guess.

[A]

All right, keep going. Keep going.

[B]

Yeah, let's see. Yeah. Score says. He says he didn't. He didn't. Once he was given the book, he didn't read it until years later. But he says in the meantime, he says he became very aware of the power of passivity withholding, the power of not speaking, the power of not saying what's going on. And then he felt like he. When he read Age of Innocence, finally he really understood it.

[A]

That's right, because everything is going on under the surface, unsaid. And. And I know that that is a challenge for readers who go into this book or even this film, expecting it to be a love triangle story with a lot of emoted, you know, scenes.

[C]

Because, yeah, it's a. It's fundamentally a story about the things that people almost do but don't.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And like, how do you capture that on film? It's even more difficult. I mean, it's difficult to happen in a novel, I think.

[A]

Think.

[C]

Just it doesn't have a whole lot of incident. It doesn't pull the reader along necessarily at a rapid, you know, breakneck pace. But, yeah, even more difficult in film.

[A]

A lot of people over on our Patreon Discord talked about how the first time they had read this book, they. They read it wrong. And they really appreciated reading with the podcast. And again, shout out to you guys, because the Discord was hopping with the most brilliant observations. I mean, you guys were breaking down every painting that was mentioned and pulling out the parallels there. And Karita was schooling us all on every aspect of the operas and Faust and all the ways that. That played in, and just absolutely fascinating stuff, even. So, it turns out, and I did not know this, but it. And I'm going to go by memory here, so I'll probably say something wrong, because I read this a week ago, but she was explaining that the end of the Faust opera is Faust looking up at the window of the girl waiting for her. And then she does, and he goes up and it's his destruction. And so for Newland Archer to not go up. Yeah, right. Mind blowing. So. So she, Edith Wharton was using Faust all the way through. And of course, in the film, they did a great job, I thought. I was so impressed that he was taking the time to show the opera scenes and then to deliberately, visually parallel them with Ellen and Meg. Just. It blew again. I was just like, I kept saying, somebody understands this book. Book. Somebody understands this book, like, has thoroughly.

[B]

Gone through it and. And pulled out every stop to make this happen. Oh, my gosh. That's blowing my mind right now.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

Yeah, that's going on over the Patreon Discord. Come and join us. Five bucks a month.

[B]

Yeah. But they. They mentioned that when they were going through and adapting the book, if Edith Wharton made any kind of specific reference to some. To something like, like the opera, like to. To Faust, they made sure to put it in. And then they. I think they said they did. They had a researcher work for two years to get all of the. Everything right that they. They possibly could.

[A]

Like, research so many paintings, too.

[B]

So many paintings. The. The centerpieces, they were done from research. They would. With the paintings. They went and they. They researched which of these characters, like, which families were these characters based on and what sort of paintings would they have had in their houses. Like, they went to immense detail to get everything right and begin to tell.

[A]

You how much I respect that level of research. No one does that anymore.

[C]

I mean, this is a $30 million movie. I looked it up, and I kept thinking that just every shot here looks like it cost about that much.

[B]

Yeah, probably. It probably did.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I mean, he made the backdrops look painted in every scene. It was so intentionally. You're looking at a painting, you're looking at an opera. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself, but.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah. I don't think. When I. I don't think the new buccaneers on Apple TV spent two years of research.

[B]

Yeah. Call me crazy on anything.

[A]

Their parts aren't even historically correct. But I digress. All right, so you said this was Jay Cox's first credited screenplay?

[B]

Yes. At this point, he was a film critic for Time magazine, but he was. He was friends with Scorsese. I don't know how they know each other, but I think Scorsese's J. Cox is like Child's Godfather or something. Like, they're very good friends and they've worked together. So they work together on this one on Gangs of New York and Silence. If you haven't seen that, the one with Liam Neeson and Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield.

[A]

Wait, I just realized that was a Scorsese film. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, you see his Catholicism coming out again there, huh?

[B]

Absolutely. So actually, while they were gangs of New York. Yeah, Gangs in New York, too. That's. Yeah. They were working on. I think they were researching this at the same time they were doing Gangs of New York. So I. They might have had a lot of overlap with the. With the research. I'm not sure they're very different movies because Gangs in New York took, like, 20 years to get it made originally. I think they're originally going to have, like, Meryl Streep in it instead of Cameron Diaz. And Dan Aykroyd was going to play somebody at some point.

[A]

Who are you going to call?

[B]

The Butcher.

[A]

And so, of course, Martin Scorsese has a cameo in the film.

[B]

Yeah, both he and Jay Cox have cameos in the movie.

[A]

He was too.

[B]

Yeah. So they both had cameos as photographers. Scorsese, if you watch the movie, he is the wedding photographer. He's the one who takes May's wedding portrait. And then when she gets her picture taken after she wins the archery competition, that photographer is. That's Jay Cox.

[A]

All right, let's talk for a second about Morten Scorsese's cameo, because we had to pause it and talk about how brilliant that was just to have the director as the photographer and have him literally looking through the lens, and then the camera looks. Looks through the lens. And I was just like, whoa. Because it starts with just the image of the photograph, and then it pulls back to see the live picture being taken. And then one step further, and it's Martin Scorsese watching it. Right. And. And just signaling we are watching this story through Martin Scorsese's eyes. It was so good. But. But again, if you've listened to the podcast episodes on the. The novel, this will make sense. But the fact that they went from Ellen telling Newlin, we're not gonna be together, to immediately a picture of May as the bride. Upside down.

[B]

Upside down, yeah. Oh, I know.

[A]

Yeah, she's the upside down bride. And we both yelled. When we saw. We both yelled the upside down bride. And I was just. Once again, I was like, this guy gets it. He gets it.

[B]

Yep. Oh, my gosh, it was so brilliant. And, you know, there are other directors that do things like that. Like Coppola, when he did Dracula, he included some. He didn't have a cameo, but he included some things about, you know, filmmaking. And. And.

[A]

And I do remember that.

[B]

Yeah. And so it's kind of. It kind of didn't work. I felt like in Dracula, but here, it just. It just made perfect sense. Like their. Their love and passion for, like, photography and for film. Kind of seeps into it.

[A]

I'll tell you why I thought it worked because. Yeah, because. So they had. They, for time reasons, I presume they didn't have the wedding. And that was the one key scene that I was surprised that they left off. But then I thought. But he captured the spirit of the wedding in that one shot with the upside down photograph. And so it didn't feel like it was self indulgent like some films drawing attention that I'm the auteur and this is my film. Sometimes it seems so artificial and pretentious, but this actually worked for in one short visual, he captured the wedding without having to film the whole thing.

[C]

It's not as perhaps relevant, but another cameo in the film is Scorsese's mother briefly appears.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

If you know Scorsese's films, he always had his mother who's this old Italian joke.

[A]

She's mom and fellows. Right. She's the one who's cooking dinner.

[C]

Right. Like the Italian grandma who's always cooking in the background. That's Scorsese's mother.

[B]

Yeah. Well, I think it's his father too, with her in this one, isn't it?

[C]

Oh, really?

[A]

Wow. Really?

[B]

I think so. I think he died right before this was released. So I think that was him. Him. And the movie was like in memory of him. But yeah, they're everywhere. He has a. Like a documentary, a short documentary called Italian American where he interviews both of his parents and they kind of talk about what it's like to grow up in New York and in. In the early 20th century. And it's. It's a fun watch. If you guys get the chance to watch that. I'm sold. Yeah.

[A]

All right. So the screenplay was written in 17 days.

[B]

17 days, yeah. And they. They plotted it out and they both bought the same, like, paperback copies of Age of Innocence, so they could reference things, you know, like go to page whatever and we'll talk about this paragraph here. And apparently when they sat down to plot out the script, they realized they had made the same exact notes in the same exact places and had no idea beforehand.

[A]

No, they totally got it. I was wondering if it was going to be more one than the other. So it was both of them. They just both got it?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So you could say, like Jaycox, from a structure standpoint, really understood it. And then from visual or just kind of overall storytelling point, that's where Scorsese really thrived. They. They did such a good job.

[A]

Amazing. And of course, the cast very, very well. Cast perfection. Yeah, let's talk about that. I mean, Daniel Day Lewis, he was the stuff at that time.

[B]

He was hot stuff.

[A]

Well, he won the Oscar for My Left Foot. That was the first thing I ever saw.

[C]

He's like one of those actors who's going to do the opposite in his new film of what is left. Yeah. So he's going to. He did this right after Last of the Mohicans, a very different kind of film set in period New York.

[A]

I thought he was amazing because, let's be honest, the Newland Archer character is hard to pull off.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because he could come off just looking derpy or dull or, like, have to. Yeah. Or like. But. But. But he did it in a way where you can tell there's something under the surface.

[B]

It's believable.

[C]

Also not repulsed by his character. Like, he never made him. He wasn't the Cecil character from A Room With a View, whom he also played very.

[B]

Oh, that's right.

[C]

But like, I did. I was reading a bunch of reviews of this, and one. One critic at the time, one of the film's, I guess, few, Not Lovers. And this film received mostly good reviews when it appeared. But someone said that I couldn't stand how indecisive Daniel Day Lewis was.

[A]

Like, that's the entire character. That's the whole point.

[C]

I didn't really like how jealous Othello was or how ambitious Macbeth was. Couldn't you make him less ambitious? I mean, for crying out loud, he's the main character. Make him a little bit more likable. Now, Ronnie Christo, the whole revenge thing.

[B]

I mean, that's been done.

[A]

Okay, so Daniel Day Lewis, I know, is, like, super well known for being, like, the method actor. Did he method his way through this?

[B]

He sure did. Statue to form. So this is not. I don't think this is the wildest thing I've ever heard about his acting, but. So he basically stayed in character during the whole production on and off set. He requested specifically to stay in a hotel that was, like, contemporary with the time period of the movie. So it was like a Gilded Age hotel. He wore. I think he wore, like, suits and a top hat and carried a cane around with him when he was walking through the streets of New York. He requested to have period accurate shaving cream and things.

[A]

Like.

[B]

It was just, like, completely bonkers. And thankfully, this was like, the most normal character that he's ever probably played. So it didn't freak people out too much. But. But he really goes all out and it works. So It.

[A]

It. It did work. Okay, so what about the female leads? We have, of course, Ryder, who we've always already mentioned, who was. I mean, she had done Edward Scissorhands, but she also was a little woman. Right after this or right before?

[C]

Right after.

[A]

Right after. So this was her first movie like this. So she was. She was Beetlejuice. She was.

[B]

She did Beetlejuice, Heathers.

[A]

Yeah. But all kind of indie, like, where she was like kind of the Dark Horse girl.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so I remember when this came out, being surprised that she was playing l'. Angenue. That is very against type for her. Yeah, I thought she was great, but it was a. It was a surprising choice.

[B]

She did a great job. Was this before or after the Crucible? Was the Crucible after this.

[A]

I know. This is before Reality Bites.

[B]

Okay. That was like. She's been in so much stuff.

[A]

Well, she was the 90s girl.

[B]

He was. She really was. Well, then she was in Dracula around the same time. Yeah. I think.

[A]

I guess you could argue May Willen has something in common with Mina Harker.

[B]

I can see that. Okay.

[A]

And then, of course, we have Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen Olensky. Any stories behind their castings?

[B]

Not really. Scorsese talks about seeing Michelle Pfeiffer in, I think it was called Married to the Mob, and he.

[A]

Oh, I remember that.

[B]

And then he saw her in something else that was a completely different character, and he thought that she really had the range to play this character. And I'm so glad he did. I love Michelle Pfeiffer, so that's probably why I like watching this movie so much. She's just. She's super. She's super duper. And then Winona Ryder, I think, was Jay Cox's suggestion. He had seen, like, two movies of hers back to back one weekend, and then he called Martin Scorsese up, and he was like, yep, let's get her. And that was that, because she was on the rise. And then, I mean, there were a lot of great supporting actors. Miriam Margulies as Granny Minget. She kind of steals the show every time she's on the screen.

[A]

Oh, she was fantastic.

[B]

She's perfect.

[A]

It was a big, very, very big cast.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

There were a lot of faces that I thought, oh, yeah, you're, like, in every period drama. Yeah, like the guy who played Lefferts. Like, I've seen him in everything.

[B]

Oh, Richard E. Grant.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

Yeah, he's. Oh, he's in everything. Especially now. He's kind of. Since he got his Oscar nomination a couple years ago. He's in a lot of stuff. He was perfectly cast. I mean, everybody really was just. Oh, and Geraldine Chapman. Chaplin.

[A]

Yes, Geraldine Chaplin.

[B]

Charlie Chaplin's daughter.

[A]

Mrs. Wellen.

[B]

Yeah, she did a great job. She was on screen for big five.

[A]

Which one should wait, Mrs. Wellen or Mrs. Wellen?

[B]

It's interesting.

[C]

She's playing May's mother. And it's. I. I was thinking that she was probably cast in that role because 30 years earlier, when she was a young actress herself, she had played a very similar ingenue character in Dr. Zhivago. Oh, the famous David Lean doctor. Yeah.

[B]

I. I haven't watched. I haven't watched Dr. Zhivago.

[C]

Yeah, you would love it.

[B]

Okay. It came on TCM the other day, and I said it to record. So I said, as soon as. As soon as the Scorsese fest is over, I'm gonna watch Dr. Zhivago. So maybe tonight. All right.

[A]

So did they go into any kind of training to get them ready for this role?

[B]

Yeah, I think. I mean, besides Daniel Day Lewis's insane method acting, they. Scorsese had them listen to voice recordings of people who were. Who would have. Would have. Would have been alive at that time. They said Franklin Roosevelt, Alice Roosevelt. And they had recordings of Walt. Walt Whitman reciting some of his poetry, I think, as well, to kind of get that. Get the. I don't know if affected is the right word, but get that. Get the accent down for that.

[A]

That time period, because it's still the Mid Atlantic accent.

[B]

Yeah, well, yeah. Irene Dunn tried to do the Mid Atlantic thing, and it was. It didn't work out, but this is. Yeah. I thought Michelle Pfeiffer almost sounded like Jackie.

[A]

I thought the. I thought all of that was very well done. Sometimes I watch a period piece and I think, oh, you were overly coached.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know what I mean?

[B]

Like, it's like you're trying too hard.

[A]

Deliberate. Yeah. They're trying every other. Again, like, even to kind of. And we definitely, trust me, make fun of method actors. Christian Bale, settle down. But. But I. I actually think Daniel Day Lewis wanting to wear those costumes out of character is a good call, because sometimes in a costume drama, they don't move naturally. They're not. They're not used to wearing those. And it's very. I mean, we kept talking about those collars that Daniel Day Lewis had to wear, like. And Mr. Banks was like, I could not have. Have survived if I had had to wear that. But. But he. He moved Comfortably in them. He moved like somebody who is. Is in that world. And those are the kind of small details that I will often notice. And it'll kind of just jolt me right out of things.

[B]

Yeah, it's very. Feels very lived in that world.

[A]

So let's talk for just a second about one of the changes that Scorsese made. And here you're going to hear me say I actually understand why he made that change. And maybe you have some story behind it it. But I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna give you my. Like back in the day when the movie came out and I saw the movie posters and I was like, they switched the hair colors. And that's actually symbolically important because Ellen is supposed to be dark haired and May is supposed to be fair. So I'm gonna get. I got a quote here from Northrop Fry because I think he'll say it better than I will about why you. You see the ingenue as a blonde. And the more. I don't want to say seductress, but the woman in the role of the temptress is going to have the. The black hair. In the course of the narrative, the hero, if the story is comedic in structure, turns invariably to the light haired heroine, while the dark haired one is distanced or sacrificed in some way as shame as she may be desirable, but in some way taboo or of the wrong race or cause, or otherwise represents some intention, intense passion, dream or vision that cannot be accommodated by existing social arrangements. Rebecca is Jewish. Cora is passionate and of mixed race. Maggie Toliver's desires conflicting with the prevailing gender norms of her society. Miriam has a suspect background and sexual history. Heathcliff is a proletarian or esau figure allied with forces of nature and hostile to a narrow social establishment. Such figures often throw a pensive shadow over the comedic society at the end, suggesting as they do compelling areas of human desire that the final happy society tragically excludes. Now that nails these characters a hundred percent. Right?

[C]

Read that last bit again. The something society.

[A]

Such figures often throw a pensive shadow over the comedic society at the end, suggesting as they do compelling areas of human desire that the final happy society tragically excludes.

[C]

That's very well put.

[A]

It's very well put. And so of course this is a huge symbolic difference. And here's why I'm okay with Martin Scorsese doing that. Because in the society we're in, we have flipped it. Absolutely, we have flipped it. So the, the girl next door is going to have brown hair and the seductress is going to be blonde. And I totally understand visually why he did that. It would. I think it would have actually been confusing for modern audiences if. If May had been blonde and Ellen had been a brunette.

[B]

Yeah, I think so, too, there. I did try to find some kind of reason why they did this. I. I didn't hear anything from Scorsese saying, you know, that we. This is why we did it. But I think logistically, like, in terms of, you know, giving people wigs and dyeing their hair, that was also a. A factor thrown in there that, like, it's just kind of puts a lot of extra work into, like, an actor's believability. But that was. That was my thought when you were talking about that on the podcast last week or the week before that. By this time in the 90s, we had. We had flipped that. So that makes. That makes all the sense. Yeah. So nothing. Nothing definitive, but. But that would make sense.

[A]

All right, so let's just start. I mean, the title sequence stopped me in my tracks, and I thought, oh, I think we're about to watch something special. I mean, so the flowers. This, of course. So these are people who. I mean, gosh, there were so many flowers. Right?

[B]

The flowers.

[A]

Closeup of. Of. Of flowers opening and closing, close ups of centerpiece flowers and the flowers on his lapel. And. And clearly Martin Scorsese understood that the flowers were significant in the film. I mean, the detail was amazing, even down to when the countess gets the bouquet from Beaufort and gets mad and throws it out. I noticed it was exactly as the bouquet was described. It was the roses with the little purple flowers underneath. Such attention to detail. But the thing that stopped me in my tracks was that they had the handwriting script overlaid in the background.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I thought. And I thought, okay, he's drawing attention to the fact that this is a novel, and let me see if he's going to try to film it in a way where it feels like a novel. And lo and behold, he did. He did. And one of the ways was with the use of a narrator. So he used a woman, which I read was his attempt to say, this is Edith Wharton, narrator. Like, we are seeing it this from Edith Horton's perspective. So many interesting things about that. We got really excited because so much of this book is in the witty comments of the narrator, not in the dialogue.

[C]

Woodward did a really good job of kind of capturing that ride detached.

[A]

Yes. You've got. So you got all the great, snarky, witty comments.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And I honestly, I think without that, that the film, the story doesn't make as much sense.

[B]

No.

[A]

Because the characters are not saying anything. If you don't have the narrator also not saying anything, then you have no. You have no story.

[B]

Right. Yeah. So we talked a bit about Martin Scorsese and narration. And when I was watching their interviews and they were kind of defending the use of narration and including the Joanne Woodward lines, they said first of all, that. That Scorsese would time and cut the scene based on the narration. So he was, I guess at that point he was. When he was filming, they would have the narration going and kind of make sure it all fit together as far as timing goes. But they said, I think Jaycox said the narration is part of the poetry of the film. It doesn't supplement the visual poetry. It is one with visual poetry. Yeah. He said, look at Barry Lyndon, which is one of the influences. One of our favorite movies that uses narration in exactly the same way as Age of Innocence. We were very, very influenced by that. This was the heartbeat of the script. And he also says it sets the tone and the atmosphere. It serves a lot of narrative purposes. And with. With Edith Wharton, he said he likes the language and the use of words. He says you feel nourished by it. Which I thought was.

[A]

Well, I see that your note there completely contradicts what my critic said. So he says it's not meant to be Edith Warden.

[B]

Yeah. So, yeah, he said. He said it isn't necessarily Edith Wharton, but it wasn't their intention to have it. Like, this is. This is the voice of Edith Wharton. But it could be. He said he figured it was just somebody telling a story.

[A]

Okay. Okay.

[C]

And they didn't quote too much. Enough to clarify and interpret the story, but not so much as to clutter it up.

[A]

Up.

[B]

No.

[C]

Voiceover in a literary adaptation.

[A]

Okay. Can I say this? Will this make sense that in an expensive film where every detail is meticulously planned to the point where he's been criticized and called fetishistic. I will cut. Whoever said that this was. Oh, my gosh, some stupid critic. Like, like, I'm sorry. It's called faithfulness and attention to detail. He Muscosesi himself said it was a film for purists. And I, I, I. We definitely fall into that category.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But even with all that detail and so many cinematic flourishes, intentional things wipes and, and things like that, you know, to transition the scenes, to give it that twenties feel, it felt restrained to me. Does that make sense? Like the filmmaking Felt restrained. He had a light touch. He didn't linger on the things too long. Oh, let the narrator go too long. Right. Like so you have all these moving parts, but they're just so perfectly balanced.

[B]

Yeah. And I think a lot of that goes to the, the editing. He has a long time collaborator, editor Thelma Shoemaker, and I think she's worked on pretty much everything with him and still does. But yeah, they have like all these sort of vignettes that, that, that really showcase things in different ways that you don't really see in movies anymore. But you're right, they don't linger. They don't. They're not. They don't show off. They serve a purpose and they, they go away and it's just brilliant.

[A]

Mm. Mm. All right, tell us about some of the other film techniques used by Scorsese.

[B]

Yeah, so occasionally, only a few times, we have like these bursts of color. So instead of like fading to black, they'll fade to yellow or fade to red or fade to white. And that is to represent just sort of bursts of emotion. So, you know, these characters aren't really allowed to express every emotion that they have. So visually for us, the audience who might not understand how they're feeling, you can visually represent that with, with acting, but you can also do it in the editing. So this is supposed to represent, you know, the, the characters like just eruption of happiness or, you know, rage or, or something like that. And he. They said that they're very influenced by Francois Truffaut doing very similar things in his films. I couldn't find any examples in time to, to put.

[A]

I've only seen Day for Night in my film class in grad school.

[B]

I've only. I've only seen clips of things, so you got me beat. But yeah, there are some stylistic things that Scorsese's kind of become famous for. So, like long tracking shots. And that just. What that means is the, the camera kind of follows characters through in different environments. So if you've seen Goodfellas, the, the scene where they're going through like the back of the Copacabana and then getting.

[A]

To their seat, it worked so well. So, okay, again, that's another one of those techniques that I feel like when it's not well done, it's just so self indulgent. Yes, right. And you're just showing off that you did a long tracking shot, but doesn't like fit anything. It fit here because there's that scene where they're dining and it's a huge table and they're all just perfectly still and the camera's moving around. And it was so good because this is a society where people are stuck and they're not moving and the world is moving around them.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And they're like statues and that. I mean, we didn't talk about that a ton on the podcast, but there's a lot of that element that there's statues. Ellen doesn't turn around and move. People don't move. They're all stuck.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I thought. I thought for the camera to move and them to stay still was just. It was again, perfectly understood.

[C]

I like that observation.

[A]

Oh, thank you.

[C]

That's very good. You don't think of yourself as a film buff, but that's.

[A]

What's really surprising is that I can surprise you because I talk your ear off 24 hours a day and then you find out low she had a thought that she actually did not share with me.

[C]

I know getting like, sort of the preview you do before you share this.

[B]

But. Yeah. That. The tracking shot at the. At the Beaufort's ball, it reminded me also of. There's a similar shot in Goodfellas where he's kind of walking through, like, the camera is going through the bar and you kind of see different characters looking directly to camera.

[C]

It tells who everyone is.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it tells who everyone is. And it kind of gives you the feel of. Of, oh, we're. We're looking back on a memory. Like this is. We're looking through the point of view of like a time gone by. Because Goodfellas is very similar where it's being told from a. Like a present day time period. And then it's looking back, like, as through his life, as he's growing up and experiencing different things.

[A]

Oh, go ahead.

[B]

Yeah. So that just kind of. They did similar things in this shot where, you know, Winona Rider looks up at the camera and smiles like you're in it. It really puts you in the. In that environment.

[A]

I thought that Beaufort ball scene was genius. We actually rewound it so I could watch it again and show him what I was talking about, because he would catch the characters and they would freeze for just a hair of a second and they would match the painting behind them, which was just. I couldn't deal with it. And of course, one of the essays I read called it Tableau Vivant, but I don't think that's what it was. I think they're meant to be paintings that these people. Yeah, yeah. Because he's. Paintings are a big thing to Edith Wharton. And so like, he's, he's, he's not only getting all the plot points and all the motifs and the themes and old versus new and catching all of that, which of course he did, but he's giving you a sense even of her layered style because she's layering opera and literary illusions and paintings. And he, he got that across.

[B]

Absolutely. And it's tricky to do that in film because you're trying not to be too heavy handed with things, but it's just like little layers here and there, just kind of just placing it exactly in the right place.

[A]

And I think it just made for us. And again, you're right. I don't have a great love of film. And I have been. I think I did. And I've kind of lost it because I've just been so irritated and I feel like every movie you put on, I find myself turning to my husband and saying, so we just don't know how to make movies anymore. Like, we just. We just don't.

[B]

We know how to make money.

[A]

Yeah, we know how to make money. But this film was just so artfully done. It was beautiful to watch. I mean, it was. Honestly, it's a feast. It's a feast. We just watched it with our mouth open and. Martin Scorsese, sir, if you somehow stumble upon this podcast, just. Well done. It. It's a masterpiece of a film.

[B]

After, after this and doing the sort of deep dive into Scorsese, because I don't. I haven't seen very many of his movies, any more of his notable movies. He is truly a master of film. He has got film down pat. He has to be the best director, the best living director we have, without a doubt.

[A]

You know, as we. When it got to the end, Mr. Banks said, well, Scorsese just proved to us he can make a film without any naughty words and no crime.

[B]

No naughty words. No. Like sort of racy scenes that had to be added in 90s movies. And. And he really defends it too.

[A]

It didn't feel like a 90s movie.

[B]

No, it didn't. It. Absolutely.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

He remarked on this, the style of acting, it really seemed like of a different period. Especially the, the women, the, the Michelle Pfeiffer, I thought she doesn't act like that in other movies.

[B]

No, she doesn't.

[C]

The way that they delivered their lines was, I think, a little bit more deliberately theatrical.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Okay. So to that end, about. And yes. About the theatrical stuff, the painted backgrounds in the film.

[B]

Oh, I know.

[C]

I don't even.

[B]

I don't know the specifics of, like, the technical stuff, but I don't. I don't even think they had. I think that was just a. Like a camera trick to look like.

[A]

Oh, yeah. It made it look like they were walking around in a painting. And then. Because. Okay, this. I don't know how much we brought up this theme in the podcast either, but there is this theme. We did talk about it at the wedding, that it's not pews, it's opera boxes. So my whole life is a performance. Right, right. And he captured that without anybody explicitly saying that. Like the scene when he's in the opera and he goes over to Ellen and all of a sudden there's a spotlight on them.

[B]

Yes. I loved that.

[A]

Right. And I just turned to Mr. Banks and said, because they're gonna be in the spotlight for this whole thing. All eyes are on them. And even when he was looking through the opera glass, it's just all of that, like, lenses and people watching you and you're on display.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And when they. Even when they have that before they do the spotlight bit, when they're just kind of talking to each other and they have, like, the vignette kind of closes around the two of them as they're talking to each other, and then all of the sound goes away for the whole rest of the. For the whole rest of the opera house. So it shows to us. They're having this very close and intimate moment. But then the spotlight hits her, and you realize everybody's watching them. And this is like, there's nothing. Nothing personal.

[A]

Disappeared. Because no one's paying attention anymore. They're watching her.

[B]

Right. So beautifully done. I love those little vignettes.

[A]

So good, so good. What else? What else? Extreme close ups, of course. That's a Scorsese thing.

[B]

That's the Scorsese thing. And he wanted it specifically for this movie to. To place you in the movie. Like the little cigar cutters, the. The newfangled pens and things like that. Like, just to kind of showcase things.

[A]

No, but that was great because he. Again, he noticed the overseas. His new theme. The little. The small little moment when Newlin Archer complains about the fountain pen and, you know, thing. Just all kinds of things like that.

[B]

So he takes the pen. Actually, that scene just played in the background when he takes that pen and he, like, flings it and she jumps. I love that part so much because she thinks the ink is going to come out. It's just. Just little things like that just really made me happy. Yeah. See? Yeah. Extreme close ups, the paintings we've talked about. But I liked how they really took their time to go through like people. Different people's houses and go through their paintings. And then. And so like with Granny Mingot, you look, they're all paintings of dogs.

[C]

I love this scene where Granny Mingot, where she's had her illness and you know, she can't. Can't move herself around. And the four footmen carry.

[A]

This is life goals. Life goals. Okay. So when we saw Granny Mingot, I turned to Mr. Banks and said, she is styled like Aunt Pitty Pat of Gone Away.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, she is.

[A]

She is. Right. So that would have put her in the hair and dress 10 years previous.

[B]

To somebody who doesn't leave the house. Really? Yeah, that would make total sense. Well, it's funny you say that, actually. And I forgot to mention this in the 1934 version, so this is a little bit before Gone with the Wind, but the woman who plays Mrs. Welland, so May's mother, is. Is Aunt Pitty Pat. And that's the only other person I recognize from the movie. But I thought that was. That's really cool that you mentioned that. Yeah. So with the, with the paintings, they. They represent the. The characters sort of personalities without having to say very much. And then you get to Ellen's house where she has her bits of wreckage or whatever she calls it. And we actually look at the paintings and admire them for a minute. Like before, it was all just like pan shots across. Like the fact that they have all these paintings is so elegant and opulent. But when we get to Ellen's house, we actually linger on the paintings and we see them, they're more abstract. They're not of like the older school. And I know that that's. I think that's in the book. But the fact that they took the time to do that.

[A]

They took the time to do so many things that I think other filmmakers would have cut. So I can't think of anything that was thematically important in the book that the. The movie did not touch on. Definitely. And. And I got so excited when they took the time to show Newland Archer at the theater when they showed the whole scene with the guy saying goodbye and he kisses her ribbon. And then they did the Newlyn kissing the parasol. And I just thought, yes, who else would have included this? This would have been an easy place to cut. Yeah, that's a throwaway scene, but it's so thematically important.

[C]

This is something also that not every period film gets right.

[A]

But.

[C]

But I thought it was brilliant how the principal actors or principal characters, there's servants moving around them, but no one seems to notice them.

[A]

Yep. And that's correct.

[C]

Like in the book. I mean, servants. Like, we sense their presence, obviously, but no one ever mentions them or has a conversation with them. Yeah. So I thought that was, again, capturing something of the atmosphere of the book. Very.

[A]

Oh, and another technique he used that. Again, this is a real challenge when you're trying to translate a book to film, because things in a book happen interiorly. Right. Characters are thinking, they're daydreaming. And especially with Newland, there's a lot of. There's a lot of moments where he's saying nothing, doing nothing, but he's thinking things, and he's hoping she's going to say, I'm thinking of you. Right. And some of the ways that filmmakers will try to get that across can be really cheesy. A voiceover, a facial expression. I thought they handled it really well here. They had him close his eyes. Right. And even imagine it. And they act out the imagining at some point. And. Yeah, again, that can be really cheesy. It wasn't here. It worked here.

[B]

Well, so I had watched the movie again as I was rereading it. So I've read this before, but it's been a long time and I've forgotten things. But when it got to that scene where he's, like, imagining her rapping her arms around him, I thought that was happening. I. I thought that was. No, I thought it was something that Scorsese had just kind of thrown in there. I didn't realize it in the book. Yeah. I didn't remember that. And kind of blew my mind.

[A]

That's another thing, too. Not only did he capture all the important details, he didn't do the thing that they always do, which drives me crazy, because I think you cut out these five significant scenes and then you added this total random scene for God knows why. He didn't do that.

[B]

No, he was so.

[A]

I mean, I don't know why the other people do that. Why do they do that? Is it because they just want to make their mark?

[B]

It might be an ego thing. It might be they want to kind of. Yeah. Make their mark on, like, put their sort of stamp on it. But I think Scorsese's stamps and his. His signatures don't. Aren't so stylized that they detract from the story. Like, he just kind of. His is more about camera work and pulling different elements from different films in history.

[A]

Yeah, he Didn't.

[C]

He didn't seem at all determined that he was going to intrude upon the material or anything like that.

[B]

No.

[C]

I mean, maybe it's a silly comparison, but that. That short that you sent me, Atlee, for which I need to thank you, by the way, that. The short where Scorsese takes a few minutes, three pages of a unfinished Hitchcock script and films it, which is on YouTube. It's very well done. He actually makes what looks, I think, kind of convincingly as a. As a Hitchcock movie.

[B]

Yeah. Even. Even down to, like, the texture, color scheme. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

About it. The music, I mean, even as kind of a Bernard Herman sort of score.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

In the background there.

[A]

So.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, he can. He can sort of subdue himself to the material, I guess.

[B]

Yeah. And that was, by the way, that was a champagne commercial I didn't like. He made this full, like, 10 minute, like, film honoring Hitchcock and showing all these different things. And it was for champagne. It was a commercial.

[A]

He. There was that one scene where Newland's going to his office and the secretary meets him there on the doorstop. And right before that is the group shot of all the men in New York walking. And the wind is blowing them. They're all holding the hat in exactly the same way. And you. You squealed, Mr. Megs. You squealed with delight. You were like, this is so brilliantly done. They were all holding their hat in exactly the same. I mean, it was almost like Edward Scissorhands, you know, but. But not that kind of style, but.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That was so good.

[B]

I think. I think there's like a piece of footage that they had that somebody had seen before that they were referencing, like, that there's a. Like a. I think there's a real shot of people in New York walking around, like. Yeah. I think. Because at that time there were no skyscrapers, so the winds from the winds in New York were, like, even stronger at that. At that point.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It's a coastal city and.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And that would be like. You would feel naked, basically, if you're. If you had a. If you were a man outside without a hat on.

[B]

Without. Without a hat on you.

[C]

Yeah. It's hard to think of, but yes.

[B]

And then Enya plays in the background.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I like.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have been talking for 90 minutes on this film, and I don't want to cut you off here if there's anything else you really wanted to say, but I will say this. When we got to the end with the epilogue, Mr. Manx got really excited because there was a painting by Turner in that scene, and it is hanging on our walls. Not that actual painting, but we have a print of that painting. And. And what is so important about that?

[C]

The painting is the Fighting Temeraire by JMW Turner.

[A]

Okay. And so it's this ship basically being decommissioned and pulled by a steamboat off to shore. Okay. And so the ship is in a shadow, and the little tugboat pulling it is in black. And the whole. The whole painting is old versus new. And the new is coming and the old is being lost. And what you're going into is a shadow. It's dark. It's not necessarily good. And we could not believe that was the painting at the end of the film. Right.

[B]

Amazing.

[A]

Just like all the little details. Amazing. I think it would have been so fun to be a research assistant on that film.

[B]

No? Yeah. For two years, you get to just sit there and research the entire guild.

[A]

Amazing, right?

[B]

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Well, speaking of the study, there's so many things. So speaking of the study that I loved that part where you're kind of. The camera's just kind of moving through again and circling. And as time as, like, however long. I can't remember how long the time is, but it's like years and years pass by. Like, children are born, children get married.

[A]

Study. That was so good.

[B]

Brilliant.

[A]

It was room, but in time changes. Yeah, that was so good.

[B]

And then, like. So he's basically been sort of trapped in this room for years and years. And finally when he picks up the phone and talks to. Well, they changed the name in the. In the movie to Ted. I don't know why they did that.

[A]

Which made me very confused.

[B]

Yeah, me too.

[A]

Was there a third son that I met?

[B]

But when he's on the phone with him and he's talking about going to Europe, the camera starts to move away again and looks out the window and you see the window kind of. The frame of it starts to slowly dissipate and he's going out back into the world again.

[A]

Oh, I missed it.

[B]

It was so brilliant. I mean, there are little. Little things like that. I'm still trying to figure out if this is a intentional thing, but the lighting and, like, shadows that they played with really hit me for some reason. When I think when you first start to have these scenes between Newland and Ellen, they're always talking near a fire, and the shadows of the light are like hitting Ellen in a way that she has shadows on her face, and so she's sort of trapped And Newlyn doesn't have that as much. But as it progresses, when they have scenes like that, again, I think they. She starts to have less harsh shadows on her face, and he has more harsh shadows on his face because he's becoming more and more harsh trapped in this situation. And even when there's that scene where he's, like, following behind her, she's hold. May is holding a little oil lamp and it's the only light that's on in the house, and she's carrying it and he's following behind her in darkness. I loved that. And by the end, when he's reading the letter from Ellen about her leaving the lights all sort of dim down, and it's just like I'm about to Cookie. That's what it's called. But little. Just a little square of light on his face, like, that's the last freedom that he's knowing is slowly going away. It was just brilliantly done. And by the end, when he gets to Europe and he's looking up at the. The window, there's that shine from the glass of the window. I think that was in the book, too. But it flashes on his face and that's his, like, final flash of freedom. Because that's when the. It flashes to memories of Ellen in the past. And. And it was just so brilliantly done. But I haven't. Like, I really need to rewatch it and look just for that, because I'm not sure if that's.

[A]

Oh, that's good.

[B]

Intentional, but that's good.

[A]

You know, I don't want to leave without saying I think May Wellen is a difficult part to play.

[B]

Oh, it is.

[A]

I thought Winona Ryder did a fantastic job. Her facial expressions, she seems innocent and sweet.

[B]

Meek.

[A]

And meek without seeming dumb. Her interactions where he keeps trying to tell her things and she just gives him that smile. But it's. But it's. But the smile seems genuine. It doesn't seem. You know what I mean? Like, a lot of those characters come off as kind of dumb.

[B]

Yeah, no, I know, exactly.

[A]

She came off as innocent, not dumb. We were laughing, though, that she. In that time period, she played a lot of innocent characters.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[A]

That was kind of her thing for a while. But no, she was really good at that.

[B]

Well, and they. They changed how they shot her as well. So, like, when you're. Another thing I loved when they're reading out the letters and they're looking directly at the camera.

[A]

Oh, yes, that was so good.

[B]

She's reading the. When she's Reading out the telegram and she's got all these flowers behind her. She is always in flowers, if you notice. And she's always in flowers. And even if she's like sitting in a garden with flowers. But when she's reading the telegram about, oh, we've moved up the wedding date and we can get married now, and isn't it great? She's off center in the camera and the camera's moving closer and closer to her and it gets like this extreme close up of her eyes and it's just very imposing. And you're like. You're feeling like, I can't get away from this. And it kind of represents his emotional feeling of entrapment. And then later when she announces that she's pregnant, there's this sudden. It's a little unnerving, but you see her stand up to like from her chair to talk to him and tell him. And it's like it's kind of filming her from down below and it's showing her power. And you can see him, he's kind of backing away into his chair.

[A]

Oh, you're right. It was a power shift. And they captured visually. You're right. Neat.

[B]

Yeah. But it's just like a little thing like that. You don't even notice it maybe on the first watch. But it's there and it's totally intentional.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's just a brilliant movie.

[A]

Well, we. If you haven't figured it out, we highly recommend this film and you guys should check it out. You can. You can watch it on Netflix. Not on the cheapest tier, as I discovered. You can also rent it for a couple bucks on Amazon prime or Apple TV or YouTube or all the usual places. But it's well worth your time. And it's a family friend, a family movie because there's nothing. There's nothing in that.

[B]

There's taking off gloves.

[A]

It could be rated pg. Yeah. I mean, because just like the book, all the conversations are coded, so.

[B]

Right. Yeah. Also, if you really. Yeah.

[C]

Again, I experienced this film as a 10 year old, so.

[A]

But it is just. It is a ma. It. There are very few films that I think I could watch this over and over just to pick apart the artistry, just to notice something new, a new layer. It really just was just absolutely fabulous. I was not expecting that at all.

[B]

No, I know. It was really such a nice surprise.

[A]

Yeah, it was fantastic. Yeah. Because we've come. We have roasted some film.

[B]

Oh, have we ever.

[A]

We have roasted. Yeah. Nova's so good at. Thank you so much for coming on the show and for always for doing that amazing work. And maybe we can convince Atley to come onto the next All Film fellows eve and show us a few still shots of the kinds of things he's talking about because we always enjoy that. Would you do that?

[B]

I guess we could do that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Let's do it.

[C]

We appreciate your expertise very much.

[A]

We do.

[B]

All right.

[A]

So one more thing, guys. Just remember, you can go to the Cassiodorus press website, cassiodoruspress.com to get your audiobook of Jason Baxter's why Literature Still Matters. And also to pre order your Literary Life podcast mug. And if you can't remember Casiodorus Press or you can't spell it, it'll be in the show notes. But you can also go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com click on the mug and it'll take you to the Casiodores Press website. And don't forget to check out Ella Hornstra's mini class and Dr. Drought's webinar on the Vikings. Now come back next week because we are going to do a special episode that has been requested probably for the last several years and I'm finally ready to talk about it. We're going to attempt to get a little closer to answering the question, what is the literary tradition? We keep talking about it, we keep throwing that around. What? What is it? So we're going to see if we can't get a little closer to understanding what that is. And then after that, we'll spend two weeks on something I have never read before. This is a Mr. Banks pick, Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market.

[C]

Oh, I think you're going to have.

[B]

Fun with that one.

[A]

I'm looking forward to it. It'll get us in the the autumn vibes here, so stick around till the end. Mr. Banks will have a special poem for us. Again, thank you so much for being here today, Atley, and for all the and all the work you always do. So until next time, friends, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal Patreon sponsors. Visit how of humaneletters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe. Subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.