The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton chronicled the romantic tragedies of the 19th century 400, those anointed people who would fit in Lady Astor's Lavish New York Society ballroom. This 1934 film is the story of a young lawyer named Newland Archer who is pledged to a New York girl named May Welland. The marriage is in the offing for most of the film.

What stirs things up is the arrival of a mysterious woman, a Polish Countess named Ellen Olenska, who lives at an unfashionable Manhattan address, west 23rd street. Newland is charmed by the Countess and she, likewise. The Countess is in town to get a divorce. Society is as put off by Mrs. Olenska's frankness as they are with her address.

Teacups rattle at every social turn. Irene Dunne is younger in this film as Countess Olenska than in any other I've seen her in. She upstages every other actor in the film including John Boles who is inept as Newland. The movie seems a star vehicle for Dunne. At least the 1993 remake of Age of Innocence from Director Martin Scorcese gives some weight to the other characters, while failing finally to tell the story adequately. Julie Haydon, who would eventually play Laura in Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie, is suitably church-mousey as Newland's fiancee, May.

Newland's interest in and defense of the Countess eventually gets him in trouble with the upper-class set who are his peers. When push comes to shove, the question is, what will Archer do, dump the one he promised or run off with the Countess. What actually does happen is a fairly delicate bit of story-telling.

The 1934 Age of Innocence tells the story better than the 1993 version. But the older story isn't really that good either. Mrs. Wharton's novel was a sophisticated piece of work. It deserved a better telling on-screen. If you'd like a well-done thirties social drama, have a look at Dodsworth with Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton and Mary (yes!) Astor. Age of Innocence is strictly for Irene Dunne aficianados.

Of grand and velvety anachronism, The Age of Innocence is an orchestrated tale of romantic longing. A polished and elegant, if incomplete, period romance about the "innocent" wife of a wealthy New Yorker in love with another woman who, never going beyond flirtation, envelops him in layers of Victorian repression and traps him between the emotions of love- passion and bourgeois social ethics. This is a story set in the stifling atmosphere of upper-class turn of the 19th century New York. This is a rather interesting plot, though not as successful as a love story than as a social commentary. It was enjoyable to discover the vastly different generations that preceded us.

I just watched The Age of Innocence and although it is a good movie, I wish it were made in color. The Ladies costumes were great and Irene Dunn looks amazing. I have one question, did men in the 1870s wear clothing that were styled much later? John Boles' fedora and suits stepped right out of the 1930s.

This "Age of Innocence" from 1934, of course, cannot even approach the sumptuous beauty.amazing acting, and rich story-telling of the Martin Scorsese "Age of Innocence" from 1993 starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

The 1934 movie stars Irene Dunne as Ellen, John Boles as Newland, and Julie Haydon as May.

The story is told in flashback by the elderly Newland. As a young attorney in the late 1800s, he was engaged to May when her cousin Ellen came to visit from Europe. She plans to divorce her husband and is a social outcast, as these things were never done. Newland and Ellen fall in love. Do they defy convention and marry? Or does Newland marry May as promised?

Irene Dunne is lovely as Ellen. She was an actress who could do comedy and drama. John Boles was a huge star and not a tremendous actor. That kind of look was considered attractive way back when; today it has gone out of style.

There are good performances, but there is no way to watch this film after seeing the Scorsese film. It is studio-made, looks dull, and is dull. This is a story with a great deal of depth that seems untouched here -- lots going on underneath all the gentility, the trap of conventions -- here told as an ordinary story.

Helen Westley is wonderful as the cousins' grandmother, as is Laura Hope Crews as Dunne's aunt and May's mother. Lionel Atwill is also on hand as a married man who is a friend of Dunne's, an unacceptable situation.

The novel was also adapted into a play, on Broadway starring Katherine Cornell as Ellen and Franchot Tone as Newland.

If you haven't seen the stunning Scorsese film, see it.

A lawyer attempting to obtain a divorce for a countess finds his growing love resisted by THE AGE OF INNOCENCE in which they lived.

Edith Wharton's celebrated novel, illustrating how personal happiness is often crushed by public propriety, is given a fine adaptation in this well-produced film from Radio Pictures. While the movie relentlessly features almost nothing but dialogue, it is always sophisticated and deals with matters still of some importance.

In a movie with so much talk the performances are paramount and they are all of a high order. Lovely Irene Dunne is radiant as the American countess restricted by society from following her heart. John Boles is very effective as the lawyer who must also either bow to convention or be crushed by it. Feisty Helen Westley steals nearly every scene she's in as Dunne's wealthy and outspoken Granny. Laura Hope Crews is perfectly cast as Westley's slightly flustered daughter, the mother of Boles' pretty fiancée, Julie Haydon. Herbert Yost is Crews' meek little husband, while splendid Lionel Atwill enjoys himself as a rich rascal operating on society's fringe.

Movie mavens will recognize Harry Beresford as a canny museum guard and Inez Palange as a stubborn Italian maid, both uncredited.

The jazzy montage which opens the film has virtually no relationship to anything that follows and serves only to wake the audience up.