The Age of Innocence Review

Everything in 1870s New York is a weapon here, and Scorsese handles the weaponry with a relish that never collapses into satire. Michael Ballhaus slides the camera down a laid dinner table while Joanne Woodward's narration itemizes the silver, and the effect is of a society being read its own charge sheet. Dissolves bleed red and gold across faces.

The opera house opening, with a row of glasses turning in unison toward the wrong box, states the entire situation in a minute of gesture. Day-Lewis plays Newland Archer as a man whose feeling shows only in the fractional delay before he answers a question, and the carriage scene where he unbuttons a glove is more charged than most films manage with the clothes off.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the best thing in it, giving Ellen Olenska a candor that registers as recklessness in those rooms. The narration is the flaw. Woodward reads it beautifully, but it keeps explaining motives the images have already carried, and through the middle hour the film starts to feel like a very handsome audiobook. Winona Ryder's May is held opaque so long that the late reveal of what she knew has to do too much work at once.