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positioning of their directors (early and very late baby-boomers Taymor
and Luhrman, respectively, and Generation X-er Wright) and their postMTV negotiation of the musical genre, they nonetheless exhibit a
foregrounding of media manipulation and, in the case of Moulin Rouge
and The Great Gatsby, a mediated layering of disparate times that is
coupled with and “breaches” an “authentic” recreation of a historical
moment. In this, they appear to have taken up Scorsese’s perhaps
unintended challenge to the conventional “authentic” cinematic past in
more aggressive and flagrant ways. In any event, Scorsese’s The Age o f
Innocence both meets and thwarts conventional expectations for a period
film. It gives viewers a rich, detailed, almost tactile simulation of the past
that, even as it invites us to lose ourselves in this imagined re-creation,
reminds us that it is a construction. It gives viewers an “experience” of
the past upon which are deliberately laid filters of later moments in time,
a conscious illustration, perhaps, of our ability to see the past only with
twenty-first century eyes. In sum, in its insistence on being always
recognized mediated representation of its content, Scorsese’s The Age o f
Innocence complicated the relationship between the past and its
cinematic re-creation and opened the door for more complexity to come.
University of Wisconsin Whitewater
Linda A Robinson
Notes
' Scorsese explains: “I figured out that as [May] gets up from the chair we should do it in
three cuts, three separate closeups because I think [Newland will] never forget that
moment the rest of his life. I think he’ll play it back many times. When she gets up I
thought we should play it back like a memory. It’s a medium shot, then a shot of her
coming up into the frame, and then a third one she almost grows in stature. It’s just his
perception, his memory of what it’s going to be like” (Smith 72).
Works Cited
Age o f Innocence, The. Dir. Philip Moeller. Perf. Irene Dunne, John
Boles. WB Archive Collection, 2011. DVD.
Age o f Innocence, The. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Perf Daniel Day-Lewis,
Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder. Columbia Pictures, 1993.
DVD.
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New
Media. Cambridge, MA & London: MIT, 2000. Print.