---
title: "The Age of Innocence"
year: 1993
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-age-of-innocence"
fi1m_id: "the-age-of-innocence"
imdb_id: "tt0106226"
tmdb_id: 10436
wikidata_id: "Q1125442"
fi1m_score: 86
critics_score: 84
critics_reviews: 17
published: "2026-09-14"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:38:14.004504+00:00"
region: "SE"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Age of Innocence (1993)

Directed by Martin Scorsese · 2h 18m · Statens medieråd Btl · Drama, Romance

## Identity

The Age of Innocence

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-age-of-innocence
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** the-age-of-innocence
- **IMDb ID:** tt0106226
- **TMDB ID:** 10436
- **Wikidata ID:** Q1125442
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106226/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/10436, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1125442

**Fi1m score: 86** · Critics 84 from 17 reviews

*In a sentence:* Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer make good manners look bad for your health

> Martin Scorsese makes a painfully persuasive romance out of social rules and suppressed desire. Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder give the finery human weight, although the film sometimes explains its manners more patiently than necessary.

## Synopsis

Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer) are drawn to each other in 1870s New York high society, where custom governs how people behave and whom they may love. Their feelings bring them into conflict with a society that prizes propriety and polices departures from it. May Welland (Winona Ryder) also moves within this circle, whose rituals make private desire a matter of public concern. Martin Scorsese directs this adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel, with a screenplay by Scorsese and Jay Cocks.

## Review

Martin Scorsese’s *The Age of Innocence* is a moving, exacting romance, though its formal manners sometimes make the going slow. Scorsese and Jay Cocks adapt Edith Wharton’s novel with a proper regard for how much damage well-behaved people can do. In this high society, desire has to compete with a lifetime of instructions about how to behave. The film takes those instructions seriously enough for us to understand why disobedience is difficult, even when obedience looks miserable.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Newland Archer with a restraint that makes his attraction to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Ellen Olenska painfully legible. Their chemistry depends on how much feeling escapes the effort to contain it; neither performance needs a grand declaration to establish the cost. We ached watching them measure what they could allow themselves to express. It was the checking of a gesture, the effort of remaining composed, that did it. Both actors make that restraint look exhausting.

Winona Ryder’s May Welland is essential to this, and Ryder resists the temptation to make correct behaviour look merely vacant. Her composure makes us pay attention, rather than dismiss her as an obstacle to the more obviously troubled pair. The film is alert to the authority available to someone who knows precisely how a society expects people to behave. Ryder is especially good at keeping that authority quiet.

Michael Ballhaus’s cinematography encourages us to inspect the décor, which is useful in a film about people who inspect everything. Dante Ferretti’s production design supplies the period detail in such profusion that the surroundings can seem to demand good behaviour before anyone speaks. Gabriella Pescucci’s costumes add to that pressure: being properly dressed looks like work. We can enjoy the care of the workmanship and still find all this correctness oppressive. The clothes belong to people who expect to be looked at and judged.

Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing gives the gestures time to matter, keeping the acting readable amid so much visual information. The ironic narration is equally important, making the social rules intelligible without treating them as reasonable. It also gives Scorsese room to be funny about people who would not appreciate the joke. Elmer Bernstein’s score is more openly yearning than the characters can be, and that freedom is welcome. It helps the quieter performances reach us.

That help matters, because at 138 minutes the film occasionally spends longer teaching us the rules than we need. There are passages where the attention lavished on social ritual holds us at a distance from the people caught in it. The narration can compound this by explaining what the performances have already made clear. We would have welcomed a little less guidance, and fewer opportunities to admire the furnishings. The stiffness noted in some of the reviews is there, even if it seldom cancels the feeling.

As a costume romance, this is unusually interested in what it costs to keep behaving properly after proper behaviour has become painful. Scorsese does not treat the past as an excuse to give everyone modern instincts and inconvenient clothes. The performances make the attraction persuasive enough that we want relief for these people, even as the film teaches us why relief is hard to imagine. Watch it when there is time to notice a face before someone has quite brought it under control.

*Fi1m score 86, published 14 September 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is The Age of Innocence worth watching?**

*The Age of Innocence* is worth watching for anyone with patience for a slow, exacting romance about people who cannot say what they feel, and we scored it 86. Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer make restraint look exhausting, and Winona Ryder is quietly formidable. At 138 minutes it sometimes explains its manners longer than it needs to.

**How long is The Age of Innocence, and what is it rated?**

*The Age of Innocence* runs 2h 18m and is rated Btl by the Statens medieråd in Sweden. It is a drama and romance film.

**Where can I watch The Age of Innocence in Sweden?**

*The Age of Innocence* is available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from kr 39.00. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How does The Age of Innocence compare to The Remains of the Day?**

*The Age of Innocence* and [*The Remains of the Day*](https://film.one/film/the-remains-of-the-day) are both romances about lives narrowed by correct behaviour, and we recommend them beside each other. Scorsese's film is the richer to look at, with Michael Ballhaus's cinematography and Dante Ferretti's design pressing on the characters; James Ivory's is plainer and rests on polite conversation. Choose Scorsese for spectacle, Ivory for austerity.

**Is The Age of Innocence based on a true story or a book?**

*The Age of Innocence* is based on Edith Wharton's novel of the same name, not on a true story, adapted by Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks. The film keeps the book's ironic narration, which makes the social rules of 1870s New York intelligible without approving of them. You do not need to have read Wharton; the film teaches you the rules as it goes, sometimes more patiently than necessary.

**What should I watch after The Age of Innocence?**

After *The Age of Innocence*, try [*The Remains of the Day*](https://film.one/film/the-remains-of-the-day) (1993, Fi1m 88): Another life narrowed by correct behaviour, with feeling held painfully in check. Then [*In the Mood for Love*](https://film.one/film/in-the-mood-for-love) (2000, Fi1m 91): Desire and restraint made visible through clothes, rooms and the distance between people; and [*The Heiress*](https://film.one/film/the-heiress) (1949, Fi1m 90): Family expectations and romantic hope meet in rooms where kindness is scarce.

### Reviews we read (17)

- **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (4/4): Ebert praises Scorsese's elegant, faithful adaptation of Wharton's novel as a brutal story of crushed passion and social repression, filmed with patience and visual grace. He singles out the performances, especially the final scene's poignant revelations about sacrifice and regret. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-age-of-innocence-1993)
- **The Times**, Kevin Maher (★★★★★): The critic calls it Scorsese’s masterpiece and one of his finest films, a visually sumptuous adaptation pulsing with frustrated tension and unspoken sadness. It singles out the electrifying chemistry between the leads and the shattering closing scene for praise. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/the-age-of-innocence-1993-review-scorsese-s-masterpiece-k9tmbvp82)
- **Empire**, Angie Errigo (90/100, inferred): Scorsese delivers a rapturous, sensuous adaptation of Wharton's novel of forbidden love and high-society rituals in 1870s New York, with ravishing period detail and strong performances. The critic singles out the meticulous mise-en-scène, voice-over narration, and standout work from Day-Lewis, Pfeiffer, and especially Ryder for praise. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/age-innocence-review/)
- **Little White Lies**, Dan Einav (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a Scorsese work through and through despite its lack of violence or profanity, praising its exploration of brutality beneath manners and social ritual. It singles out the director's own description of the film as his most violent for its cold-blooded portrayal of repressed emotion in 1870s New York society. [Read](https://lwlies.com/in-praise-of/the-age-of-innocence-martin-scorsese-most-violent-film)
- **Slant Magazine**, Chuck Bowen (90/100, inferred): Scorsese's adaptation is an astonishing achievement that belongs in the canon of classic American cinema, rendering Wharton's world of innuendo, subtext, and repressed desire with obsessive visual flair and neurotic maximalism. It captures the exquisite agony of passion that must remain theoretical amid rigid social constraints. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/the-age-of-innocence-bd/)
- **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): The critic hails Scorsese’s adaptation as a visually breathtaking and exquisitely refined tragedy of manners from 1870s New York high society. It singles out the powerfully matched performances of Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer as guilty lovers for particular praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/mar/15/the-age-of-innocence-review-scorsese-daniel-day-lewis-michelle-pfeiffer)
- **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (90/100, inferred): Scorsese has made a gorgeously uncharacteristic film that functions as a window on a world he had just discovered. The Wharton novel is a deliciously hard-edged satire of manners and customs, and Scorsese's outsider's fascination matches that of the author. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/17/movies/review-film-the-age-of-innocence-grand-passions-and-good-manners.html)
- **Time Out**, GA (90/100, inferred): Scorsese's adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about repressed passion in 1870s New York high society is magnificent and expressionistic, with excellent performances and vivid use of mise-en-scène, decor, gesture and ironic narration to convey erotic fervour trapped by social rituals. It is the director's most poignantly moving film. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-age-of-innocence)
- **Vulture**, Matt Zoller Seitz (90/100, inferred): The film delivers unrelenting emotional and psychological violence that is as invasive and devastating as the physical brutality in Scorsese's gangster pictures. It stands out for blending historical observation with dynamic cinematic techniques to expose tribal power structures and repressed passion. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2021/01/the-exquisite-violence-of-scorseses-the-age-of-innocence.html)
- **Film Comment**, Steven Mears (80/100, inferred): Scorsese's version is definitive and one of his most visually dynamic works, using free-ranging camerawork, color, and editing to convey the cruelty of Gilded Age society's stifling mores and emotional violence. It balances nostalgia for the era's surfaces with clear-eyed recognition of the brutality beneath the polite surfaces. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/tcm-diary-ages-innocence/)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (80/100, inferred): Turan calls the film a beautifully done, polished, and cinematic adaptation that masterfully meets the challenge of Wharton's delicate romance despite Scorsese's visceral reputation. He praises the re-creation of period detail and the lead performances, especially Day-Lewis, while noting a certain distance in tone. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-09-17-ca-36053-story.html)
- **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (75/100, inferred): Scorsese delivers a serious film with sumptuous detail and a brilliant central performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, though some casting choices leave female characters corseted and the emotion not fully felt. It succeeds as a wake-up call from the past rather than a mere costume piece. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/09/13/gilded-pleasures)
- **The Independent**, Adam Mars-Jones (70/100, inferred): Scorsese reformulates his style for a subtler, more indirect subject, bringing the past to life through precise detail without false immediacy and conveying the hypocrisy and social codes of old New York. The critic praises the film's anthropological eye, production design, and clever use of voice-over and imagery while noting it succeeds by not being merely painterly. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-mastering-the-past-the-big-picture-adam-marsjones-on-martin-scorsese-s-the-age-of-innocence-1409924.html)
- **Variety**, Todd McCarthy (30/100, inferred): An extraordinarily sumptuous piece of filmmaking and an impeccably faithful adaptation, with superb craft in all departments, but the material remains cloaked by propriety and emotional starchiness, limiting its appeal to sophisticated viewers. [Read](https://variety.com/1993/film/reviews/the-age-of-innocence-1200432845/)
- **Den of Geek**, David Crow (90/100, inferred): The film is an underrated masterpiece and Scorsese's most cruel and ruthless vision of a closed society, a sumptuous triumph that faithfully adapts Wharton's novel while revealing emotional and psychological violence more harrowing than physical brutality. It excels in its meticulous recreation of the era's refined customs as a facade for tribal control and self-sacrifice. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/martin-scorsese-right-the-age-of-innocence-most-violent-movie/)
- **/Film**, Jeremy Smith (90/100, inferred): Scorsese's adaptation is a masterpiece of heartbreaking repression in Gilded Age New York society. The critic praises the performances, especially Day-Lewis, the period detail in production design and costumes, and the lush Elmer Bernstein score. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/2032786/daniel-day-lewis-romance-movie-the-age-of-innocence-deserves-love/)
- **Collider**, Ron Evangelista (85/100, inferred): The film is Scorsese's most brutal work through its depiction of emotional and societal violence rather than physical. The critic highlights the subtle, devastating performances and the way high-society repression leads to profound heartbreak. [Read](https://collider.com/the-age-of-innocence-martin-scorsese/)

## Details

- **Director:** Martin Scorsese
- **Director:** Martin Scorsese
- **Screenplay:** Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese
- **Novel:** Edith Wharton
- **Cinematography:** Michael Ballhaus
- **Editor:** Thelma Schoonmaker
- **Music:** Elmer Bernstein
- **Production design:** Dante Ferretti
- **Costume design:** Gabriella Pescucci
- **Producer:** Barbara De Fina
- **Cast:** Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer; Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen Olenska; Winona Ryder as May Welland; Alexis Smith as Louisa van der Luyden; Geraldine Chaplin as Mrs. Welland; Jonathan Pryce as Rivière; Richard E. Grant as Lawrence "Larry" Lefferts; Alec McCowen as Sillerton Jackson
- **Runtime:** 2h 18m
- **Certificate (Statens medieråd):** Btl
- **Release (Sweden):** 29 October 1993
- **Genres:** Drama, Romance
- **Also in:** [Golden Globe Best Drama winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-globe-drama.md) (Nominee, 1993)
- **Budget:** $34 million
- **Box office:** $32 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Mx8OSlNYM

## Where to watch in Sweden

- Amazon Prime Video: rent kr 39.00, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy kr 79.00, uhd

*Checked 2026-09-14.*

Also available in: AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CO, DE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HR, IE, IN, IT, JP, LT, MX, NL, NZ, PL, PT, RS, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 1994: Best Original Score (nominated); Best Production Design (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Costume Design (won)
- BAFTA Film Awards 1994: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (won)
- David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actress 1994: David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actress (nominated)
- Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film 1993: Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film (nominated)
- Golden Globes 1993: Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Motion Picture – Drama (nominated); Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (won)
- National Board of Review Award for Best Director 1993: National Board of Review Award for Best Director (won)
- National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography 1993: National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography (nominated)

## If you liked this

- *The Remains of the Day* (1993), Fi1m 88: Another life narrowed by correct behaviour, with feeling held painfully in check. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-remains-of-the-day.md)
- *In the Mood for Love* (2000), Fi1m 91: Desire and restraint made visible through clothes, rooms and the distance between people. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/in-the-mood-for-love.md)
- *The Heiress* (1949), Fi1m 90: Family expectations and romantic hope meet in rooms where kindness is scarce. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-heiress.md)
- *Brief Encounter* (1945), Fi1m 90: For another romance whose ordinary courtesies make the longing harder to bear. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/brief-encounter.md)
- *The Leopard* (1963), Fi1m 88: A changing social order observed through ceremony, fine clothes and watchful faces. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-leopard.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-age-of-innocence