RETHINKING SCORSESE’Ss  THE AGEhe Age of OF INNOCENCE & RITUAL: SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA IN THE UK

"...this was a world balanced so precariously that its harmony could be shattered by a whisper…" The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, 1920

“...personal identity within an enclosed subculture that is constrained, not necessarily by geography or ethnicity… but by other threats from outside forces.”  Richard A. Blake Street Smart : The New York of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, and Lee. 2005

Introduction

The lives and social rituals of the South Asian diaspora in Britain have at various times been explored by writers and filmmakers since the mid 1970s - Anita Desai, Farrukh Dhondy, Hanif Kureishi, Ayub Khan Din, Gurinder Chada (1). I aim to look at how Martin Scorsese’s movie The Age of Innocence, based on the novel by Edith Wharton, which seems at first to have nothing to do with South Asians, has many similarities with the lives of sections of the South Asian diaspora in contemporary Britain.

The Age of Innocence is set in the 1870s, its central characters are white upper class New Yorkers, some who trace their origins to and maintain links with European aristocracy. The majority of South Asians in Britain today are the offspring of peasantry who migrated to Britain in the 1950s, 60s and 70s from villages in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh(2).  I shall examine questions of ritual, patriarchy, and gender relations m.  Making comparisons across time, geography and classes.

The adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence for the screen also throws up questions about the possibilities and limitations of adapting literary works. Implicit in my essay is an examination of how successfully Scorsese manages to translate the story and themes of Wharton’s novel for the screen.

Scorsese’s strategy to overcome is aware of some of the challenges of adaptation andis his use of the narrator voice-over is part of his strategy for bridging the gap between the literary and cinematic forms. As Scorsese has acknowledged:

I wanted to give the audience the impression of the feelings I had when I read the book. Literally as is, Edith Wharton. It's a narrator who’s very tricky, who’s presenting the story in this way to teach a lesson.(3)

I intend in this essay to  present a literary overview of The Age of Innocence and the historical and cultural significance of the representation of an elite layer of society in  late nineteenth century New York. Having done that I will then look at the adaptation of the novel for the screen by Martin Scorsese. The third part of the essay is an attempt to examine critical responses to Martin Scorsese’s adaptation. Reflection and analysis of corresponding aspects of South Asian contemporary culture will emerge as the argument

develops.

A Literary Overview

Pulitzer Prize- winning The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is arguably, as literary critic Harold Bloom says :

The best historical novel of Old New York. The Age of Innocence retains great interest both as social history and as social anthropology.(4)

When published in 1920 the novel  sold 115,000 copies in two years and earned the author $50,000. The novel is a unique insight into the lives of upper class New Yorkers, it  lays bare the social structure and complexities of upper class New York society during the mid 1870s.

The offspring of a wealthy New York family Edith Wharton was early on in life exposed first hand to European and upper-class New York cultural milieus. She was ideally placed to dissect the mores of ‘East Coast Brahmin’ lives from an insider perspective. Before the publication of the novels The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), and twenty-three years before the publication of The Age of Innocence, Wharton co-authored with architect Ogden Codman Jr  The Decoration of Houses (1897), a book on the intricacies of late 19th century interior design. Her interest and knowledge of architecture and design proved an extremely useful resource in transforming locations into carefully mapped out extensions of characters.

We first meet Newland Archer, the male protagonist and affluent scion of an Old New York, arriving late at the opera "club box" :

There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered over a cigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking.(5)

The descriptions in the novel are not of only what takes place but where and how it takes place. Precise details of decoration, furniture, art works on walls and how characters are dressed and behave socially are integral elements to Edith Wharton’s approach to storytelling. The characters are given breadth and depth in the context of space, place and location.  The meticulous attention to the visual as an elaboration of various characters personalities at every twist and turn of the unfolding narrative would be invaluable for any filmmaker;, in Martin Scorsese’s hands these are ingredients which make for a remarkable film.

At another level the details of design and etiquette are also bound up with the ways in which Wharton understands how this layer of New York society functions at the social level. As Nancy Bentley has noted :  

It is these minute aspects of manner, rooted in details of speech, clothing, carriage, and taste, that constitute an invisible force keeping ‘different social strata from mixing’.(6)

These codes and rituals work as a means of separating those who have position and standing in society from those of inferior status. As social anthropologist Pnina Werbner has highlighted, South Asian migrants in Britain use rituals as means to differentiate themselves from those around them and to assert hierarchy within the South Asian community:

…rituals is one mode enabling migrants to emphasise the distinctive culture uniting them with their fellow migrants, and separating them from other groups in the society… At the same time domestic rituals and ceremonies draw social boundaries internal to the ethnic group as a whole, around select categories of people.(7)

The Age of Innocence – a brief synopsis

Newland Archer is the junior partner in a successful legal practice. Soon after the start of the novel he becomes publicly engaged to May Welland, a member of an equally important family. Along with being beautiful and virtuous May understands her place in the social order and the importance of preserving her position in it.

As the engagement is about to be announced Archer is introduced to a childhood acquaintance, May’s cousin Countess Ellen Olenska. From the outset Ellen and Archer are attracted to each other. Ellen, orphaned at an early age, was brought up her unconventional aunt in Europe. She is recently separated from her philandering Polish husband in Europe and in distinct contrast to May is a cosmopolitan spirit interested in artistic pursuits and intellectual company. A key element of their attraction is the recognition by each that the other sees through the hypocrisy of the society they are surrounded and bound by.

Ellen's decision to divorce her European husband sends her family into a panic. For them the idea of divorce is bad enough, but for a woman to divorce her husband is way beyond the pale. Especially as they fear the scandalous facts which might come to light during the divorce proceedings. The senior partner in Archer’s firm of lawyers convinces him, on behalf of the family, to dissuade Ellen from going through with the divorce. He succeeds in his task, however in the process he starts to fall in love with her.

Afraid of his feelings and their possible consequences Archer tries to encourage May to bring forward their wedding. He asks May's grandmother, the strong-willed Mrs. Mingott, for her help in speeding up the wedding. Mrs. Mingott also happens to be Ellen’s grandmother.  At the same time Archer cannot help telling Ellen that he has fallen in love with her. Ellen admits to loving him but she cannot contemplate the thought of hurting May. While they are talking a telegram arrives from May, who is holidaying in Florida with her parents, in it she sayings that her parents have agreed to the wedding date

being moved forward.

The wedding proceeds and the couple go on honeymoon to Europe. However Archer realises that he is doomed to an empty and joyless existence with May. In the meantime Ellen moves to Washington. When he and May visit Mrs. Mingott in her holiday home in Newport he discovers that Ellen has refused to return to Europe even though her husband wishes it, as does the family.

His determination to be with Ellen is rekindled. She returns to New York to take care for Mrs. Mingott, who has after she hads a stroke. Mrs. Mingott accepts her decision not to return to her husband and agrees to provide an allowance for her. Now that she is back in New York Archer persuades Ellen to become his mistress. However before they can consummate their relationship, unknown to him, May informs Ellen that she is pregnant. This results in Ellen’s decision to return to Europe but not to reconcile with her husband. After Archer and May host a farewell dinner for Ellen, Archer is overwhelmed by the thought of Ellen’s pending departure. He tries to tell May that he is going to leave her for Ellen, but before he can finish May declares that she is pregnant.

Archer now accepts that he is stuck in his marriage with May and remains with her. The film jumps forward into the future, and Wwhen he is fifty-seven years old she dies. His oldest son, Ted, persuades him to take a trip to Paris with him. While they are there, without his knowledge, Ted arranges for them to visit Ellen. When Ted gets there Archer is already seated on a bench outside her apartment. He changes his mind and decides not to go up to see Ellen and lets Ted go on his own.

Archer and Ellen’s passion develops amidst an ever-watchful world that punishes even the smallest deviation from the rigidly observed codes binding its members together. This is an environment of repression and hypocrisy in which patriarchal power structures unquestioningly prop up the position of men at the apex of a finely balanced social pyramid.

MAlthough men, though themselves, be it to a lesser degree than the women, are also hemmed in and constricted by the refined social order that they play an active part in upholding and enforcing. Nancy Bentley highlights that:

…in Wharton’s world of customs and manners it is the subtlest shades of decorum that can contain the ‘gleam of a knife.(8)  

The Age Of Innocence – The Film

The 1992 film adaptation of the Edith Wharton’s novel by Martin Scorsese was not the first. There had been two previous films of the novel. The first was directed by Wesley Ruggles (adapted by Olga Printzlau) and produced in 1924 by Warner Brothers, for which Edith Wharton, who apparently disliked cinema, received $15,000(9). The second was a talkie directed by Philip Moeller

(adapted by Margaret Ayer Barnes, Victor Heerman, and Sarah Y. Mason), produced by RKO Radio Pictures in 1934. Neither film was a critical or financial success.

The Age of Innocence could be seen as seemed aan unusual choice for the auteur director of Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver, (1976) Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990), yet when it was released it was met with acclaim. This is possibly because of the underlying tensions that fascinate Scorsese, as well as his keen interest in tribes or particular groups.

The closed tribal nature of the world of Scorsese’s 1970s New York Italian gangsters has resonances with the upper class world that Wharton explores in the New York of the 1870s. As Robert Casillo puts it:

...the codes and rituals of the Italian American underworld, which specify the limits this subculture places upon violence as well as its rules of inclusion and exclusion, find their upper-class analogue in the late-nineteenth century Manhattan society depicted in The Age of Innocence, in which the malicious strategies of social acceptance, conformity, containment, and ostracism take not an overtly violent form, as with the mob, but lie concealed beneath the courtesies and benignities of social ritual.(10)  

Jay Cocks, Scorsese’s friend since the late 60s, who gave the filmmaker Wharton’s novel to read and co-wrote  the script with him, said the film reminded him of Mean Streets and Goodfellas :  

It’s guilt and conscience – the definitive Scorsese show...It’s about a different tribe, but it is still a tribe.(11)

Friendship, loyalty, conformity and containment also play a big part in the lives of the South Asian diaspora, along with ostracism for those who break the codes that people are supposed to live by.

Scorsese has created a distinctive visual language that has evolved over several filmmaking processes. In Mean Streets, his break-through film, Scorsese employs cinematic techniques that recur in later films. For example he uses voiceover as a means of providing a multi-layered insight into story and character. He uses slow motion to stretch time, intensifying the emotional resonance of scenes. Just before Charlie (Harvey Keitel) arrives at the club, a recurrent red light-bathed location in the film, we see the club in a slow motion travelingtravelling shot. When Charlie enters his walk becomes a ceremonial slow motion walk-cum-float through the club. A short while later Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) enters and the slow motion travelling shot of the bar is repeated, now with him walking the length of the bar with a woman on each arm. Music, diegetic and non-diegetic, plays a key part throughout the film.

The closed tribal nature of the world of Scorsese’s 1970s New York Italian gangsters has resonances with the upper class world that Wharton explores in the New York of the 1870s. As Robert Casillo puts it :

...the codes and rituals of the Italian American underworld, which specify the limits this subculture places upon violence as well as its rules of inclusion and exclusion, find their upper-class analogue in the late-nineteenth century Manhattan society depicted in The Age of Innocence, in which the malicious strategies of social acceptance, conformity, containment, and ostracism take not an overtly violent form, as with the mob, but lie concealed beneath the courtesies and benignities of social ritual.(10)  

Jay Cocks, Scorsese’s friend since the late 60s, who gave the filmmaker Wharton’s novel to read and co-wrote  the script with him, said the film reminded him of Mean Streets and Goodfellas :  

It’s guilt and conscience – the definitive Scorsese show...It’s about a different tribe, but it is still a tribe.(11)

Friendship, loyalty,“conformity” and  “containment” also play a big part in the lives of the South Asian diaspora,  along with “ostracism” for those who break the codes that people are supposed to live by.

Every shot  of Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence steeps the viewer in the rich visual detail of ‘Old New York’; be it interiors, the railway station or a busy Manhattan street. The lush title sequence, designed by Saul Bass, sets the tone for the film with elaborate copperplate handwriting, slow motion time-lapse cinematography of flower buds opening, ornate filigree lace and rich colour tones.

The first image, post the titles, is a sunburst yellow bunch of daisies: a colour that is later used to signify Countess Ellen Olenska. We hear a female voice singing an aria, a hand takes a flower. We are on a stage during an opera performance. The candle and lime-lit opera house where Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) arrives purposefully late, is full of the elite of New York society. Through a series of pans, dissolve and stop frames we are shown ladies in dazzling ball gowns, some wearing tiaras, glittering jewelry on necks and wrists and men in formal evening attire with gold fob watches in their waistcoats. TLeaving us in very little doubt that this is a world where conspicuous symbols of opulence are not hidden discreetly away but displayed and held in high regard. In this sequence we also meet the other two major characters in the film; May Welland (Winona Ryder) and Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). In contrast to Wharton’s novel where May Welland is blonde and Countess Ellen Olenska is a brunette in Scorsese’s film it is the other way round. What stereotypes of women does that uphold/challenge?

After the opera we move to the annual ball at the Beaufort mansion. The narrator (Joanne Woodward) adds a crucial layer to the narrative, and every so often gives the audience access to Newland Archer’s thoughts, she tells us:

... the Beaufort house was one of the few in New York that possessed a ballroom. Such a room, shuttered in darkness 364 days a year, was felt to compensate for whatever was regrettable in the Beaufort past. (12)

Through a series of dissolves the room suddenly comes to life. The gilt chairs are set out, the chandelier comes alight and pairs of dancers swoop by. Once again the opulence of the surroundings and its denizens leaves us in no doubt that we are in the midst of high society. Archer arrives and makes his way through a series of interconnected rooms populated by artworks and people in conversation. When he reaches the ballroom and surveys the dancers, slow motion is used to intensify the scene. The narrator introduces us to Larry Lefferts's (Richard E. Grant) and Sillerton Jackson (Alec McGowen):

Lawrence Lefferts for instance was the foremost authority on “form” in New York. And his opinion on pumps versus patent leather Oxfords had never had never been disputed. On matters of surreptitious romance his skills went unquestioned. Old Mr. Sillerton Jackson was as great authority on “family” as Lawrence Lefferts was on “form”. The mean and melancholy history of Countess Olenska’s European marriage was a buried treasure he hastened to excavate. He carried like a calling card the scandals and mysteries that had smoldered under the unruffled surface of society for the last fifty years.(13)

In this social circle the controlling of people’s actions is carried out, unashamedly, by the likes of Lawrence Lefferts and Sillerton Jackson. They play roles which in Scorsese’s other films are undertaken by Mafia enforcers who ensure that codes are strictly adhered to at all times. Åke Persson  points out:

…in the Sicilian Mafia, the main model for Scorsese, “natural kinship” that is, family, constitutes the most important bond, followed by “ritual kinship,” “friendship,” “instrumental friendship,” and “clientele relationship”, all of which aim to secure close ties. Furthermore, for the close relationships to function satisfactorily, certain norms, or what could also be called “codified rules” apply to the members. (14)

Not surprisingly similar significant networks of connections exist within the South Asian communities in Britain which also have their origins in rural peasant backgrounds. Concepts of honour and respect underlie much of the interaction within families and across social groups.

One of the clearest connections between the movie’s representation of upper class New York and the South Asian community revolves around the rituals of food and consumption. There are seven meals throughout the film, shown in different degrees of detail. Close attention is paid to what is served, how it is served, the number of courses, the cutlery and crockery used. This layer of

New Yorkers distinguishes themselves from the rest of the population through celebrating their status asbeing connoisseurs of fine dining.

The meals take on the significance of elaborate rituals of consumption as they are also visual representations of the class privileges enjoyed by the characters. When matriarch Mrs. Mingott decides to hold a dinner for her niece Ellen so that she can be introduced to the leading New York families she personally oversees the arrangements down to selecting the appropriate cutlery for each of the courses. We get to see the hurly burly of the preparations, the ingredients arriving in the kitchen and staff painstakingly preparing food. Interestingly the kitchen scene is the only time that we see black characters, two female cooks, in the film. The book does not contain this scene but in the book Mrs. Mingott does have a mulatto maid who does not appear in the film. The preparations come to no avail as no one accepts the invitation. Hand written refusals are received, the words “regrets”, “must decline” loom large. The snub slight to Ellen, however politely expressed, is obvious.  The narrator informs us:

They all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world. The real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.(15)

There are resonances with the lives of South Asians where what is meant is not said but intimated, things are rarely spoken out in the open. Elaborate and polite language has developed which means that nothing is expressed directly but always in a guarded way. Meals can take on ritualistic social significance, especially when they involve more than the immediate family. Having extended family members and friends for meals can make them into elaborate occasions for consumption.  

In Asian society, the high point of the ritualistic nature of meals arepoint of the ritualistic nature of meals is weddings, which in a British context can sometimes involve well over a thousand guests. Who does or does not get invited takes on major and complex significance when the extended family and friendship networks are so large. The inclusion or exclusion of certain people as guests requires detailed knowledge of who has done what, when and to whom in the past. The negative effects of getting this wrong can last for generations. Specific records are kept of what gifts are given, especially gifts of money. These records are later referred to when gifts have to be given by the receiving family to those who gave them gifts. These complex exchange relations have combined with rituals in the diaspora in particular ways. Even those who were once from rural backgrounds, and in a British context have become working class, are now able replicate the lifestyles of the wealthy ‘back home’.  As social anthropologist Pnina Werbner has observed of British Pakistanis living in Manchester, they are able to set themselves apart  through rituals :

… integration, of Mancunian South Asian settlers into the British economy, has been associated, paradoxically, not with cultural assimilation, as might be expected, but with ethnic cultural

intensification, as the ritual celebrations of the elite have increased in scale, expense, frequency and cultural elaboration. This semiotic power struggle is a familiar one from the works of Thornsten Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu. But while sociologists such as Bourdieu stress the integral relation between two factors – production and consumption – it is evident that among South Asian immigrants the relationship is, in fact, triadic – between production, consumption and reproduction. In such triadic systems of consumption, competitive lifestyle strategies often centre on reproductive rituals. These rites of passage, and especially weddings, allow scope for complex exchange relations, and profligate displays of wealth and its destruction.(16)

Rituals transcend geography and class, as does patriarchy. Although Werbner focuses on Pakistani migrants and their offspring in Manchester a great deal of her analysis would apply to other South Asian diasporic communities in Britain and tangentially to the ‘tribal’ community portrayed in The Age of Innocence.

In the South Asian community the nature of the food served at weddings is always very similar. Of course there are specific menus for each community depending on whether it is Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati or Bangladeshi. What counts is how the food is cooked, how it is served, who does the serving and who gets served first. The wedding couple become a very small cog in a very large and archaic mechanism. In broad terms marriage is still seen as the coming together of families rather than just the couple who are marrying. The families have to approve of each other in terms of social position; this approval is often dependent on cast and clan origins.

Although geographically far removed from South Asia where the patriarchal structures were formed, the rigid patriarchal codes which governed the behaviour of earlier times continue to play a major part in regulating and controlling the present. This happens in varying degrees be it middle class or working class families. Power is located with men, women play a subservient role. Women continue to function as extensions of property that have to protected, controlled and watched. Their freedom is dependent not on their own will and desires but on that of the social group which they are born into and raised. (Men and women both have to submit to custom when their marriages are arranged but I think there is a difference in terms of the tribe of Wharton and the tribe of South Asian immigrants: the New Yorkers are consolidating their power and status and wealth, whereas the South Asians are reasserting their identity, there is also power at play but in comparison to the rest of society they’re small potatoes compared to all those toffs.)

After Mrs. Mingott's introductory dinner for Ellen is abandoned as a subtle punishment for the social faux pas of separating from her husband, (why? is this not important in terms of patriarchal admonition) Newland Archer and Mrs. Archer (Sian Phillips), his mother, appeal to the supreme heads of the family Louisa and Henry Van der Luyden (Alexis Smith & Michael Gough) for

their official sanction. They sit at the very pinnacle of New York society, with an aristocratic family tree that pre-dates the American War of Independence and their status will eclipse the Mingott’s slight.

Ellen is invited to a sumptuous dinner given by the Van der Luydens for an extremely select circle of guests. She arrives slightly late in a red dress and then breaks further protocol:

It was not the custom in New York drawing rooms for a lady to get up and walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of another. (17)

Ellen crosses the room and sits down next to Archer and engages him in conversation. She says to Archer :

 …What most interests me about New York? It’s that nothing has to be traditional here. All this blind obeying of tradition… somebody else’s tradition … is thoroughly needless. It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it a copy of another country. (18)

The following day Archer goes to see her and tells her that the older women want to help her.  Ellen responds that although she appreciates this she knows it has a price:

Oh, I know, I know. But if only they don’t hear anything unpleasant. Does no one here want to know the truth, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who ask you to pretend. (19)

My personal experience and observation of the inner workings of the various South Asian communities leads me to believe that younger generations of South Asians have been expressing similar views as Ellen’s: “It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it a copy of another country” about the transplantation of traditions from South Asia in to Britain for some time. Ellen’s sentiments about the loneliness of pretending amongst families in order to keep up appearances many a young South Asian woman would empathise with. You’ve said South Asia four times in one paragraph. Is that okay?

My Beautiful Launderette (Stephen Frears, UK,1985, script Hanif Kureshi) is set amongst first and second-generation Pakistani immigrants in London. The central characters Omar (Gordan Warnecke) and Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) refurbish a launderette using money they have made through stealing drugs from a drug dealer sidekick of Omar’s uncle Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey).  His uncle is a shady entrepreneur who declares himself to be a “professional business man and not a professional Pakistani”. A key subplot involves Nasser’s rebellious young daughter Tania (Rita Wolf) who is disenchanted with her father's hypocritical lifestyle, especially by the fact that he has a mistress. Her sense of disdain for keeping up appearances amongst her large family is palpable. When her father attempts to quell her rebelliousness by

setting up a marriage between her and Omar she decides to leave home. What are the consequences? How is she punished?

In The Age of Innocence Archer visits Ellen on behalf of his legal firm, who have asked him to persuade her for the family’s sake that going through with the divorce is not a good idea because of the scandal. She asks what harm unfounded accusations could do to her:

ArcherPerhaps more harm than anywhere else. Our legislation favours divorce but social customs don’t.

EllenYes. So my family tells me. Our family. You’ll be my cousin soon. And you agree with them.

ArcherIf what your husband hints is true, or you have no way of disproving it … yes. What could you possibly gain that would make up for the scandal?

EllenMy freedom. Is that nothing?

ArcherBut aren’t you free already? (20)

She looks at him but does not respond.

For some time Ellen and Archer’s illicit affair develops against all odds but ultimately it is ended by May’s actions with the tacit assistance of the family. Although initially May seemappears naive and inexperienced, later it becomes clear that she is more astute than she appearsis given credit for. When she and Archer return from their European honeymoon a dinner is held for Ellen before she goes back to Europe. Family members, including Louisa Van der Luyden, ensure that there is as little one-to-one contact between Archer and Ellen during the dinner as possible:

The silent organisation which held this whole small world together was determined to put itself on record. It had never for a moment questioned the propriety of Madame Olenkska's conduct. It had never questioned Archer’s fidelity. And it had never heard of, suspected, even conceived possible anything at all to the contrary. From the seamless performance of this ritual, Archer knew that New York believed him to be Madame Olenkska's lover. And he understood, for the first time that his wife shared the belief.(21)

            Critical Responses: turning a book into a film

HistoricallyHistorically there has been a debate pertaining to the relationship between cinema, literature and theatre. One of the central questions is the extent of a filmmaker’s reinterpretation of a text: arguments is should a filmmaker reproduce a text in a slavish effort to have fidelity to  the original or should she or he attempt to capture the essence of a text.

The intention is to highlight some aspects of that debate by presenting some the arguments by here . For example the Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky has noted that (when) :

“The scenario dies in the film. Cinema may take dialogue from literature, but that is all---it bears no essential relation to literature whatsoever.” (22)

Predating Tarkovsky’s intervention to the debate a key contribution was that made in the 1950s through the writing of French film critic and theorist André Bazin:

Literal translations are not the faithful ones...A character on the screen and the same character as evoked by the novelist are not identical…More important than such faithfulness is knowing whether the cinema can integrate the powers of the novel and whether it can, beyond the spectacle, interest us less through the representation of events than through our comprehension of them.(23)

In the context of that debate a number of critics have evoked with reference to ngaged with Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of  The Age of Innocence. One of those critics is Owen Glieberman whose dissatisfaction with the novel is expressed in the following way:

For all its artistry, however, The Age of Innocence isn't entirely successful… Wharton wrote one of the most devastating of all American novels: It begins as a love story and turns into a claustrophobic tragedy, a Jamesian Night of the Living Dead. In the film, the problem isn't so much that the scenario is too chilly but that we aren't made to feel the chill. Scorsese and co-screenwriter Jay Cocks would have been wise to drop a few of the later incidents and linger more over the dramatic texture. As it is, the second half of The Age of Innocence comes at us in so many bits and pieces that it fails to achieve the overwhelming sense of loss that is the story's driving emotion. (24)

In addition to Glieberman’s criticism of the adaptation, film scholar  Pam Cook has argued that Martin Scorsese’s film alters the perspective of Edith Wharton’s novel from a story about women into a story about men. There is some basis for this as Scorsese has always placed masculinity at the forefront of his cinema, and in adapting the novel decisions had to be made about privileging certain perspectives over others. Pam Cook’s view is that Wharton’s:

…success in depicting Archer’s psyche is the distance she takes on his attitude to women. For Wharton, Archer is a flawed, contradictory character, as much at the mercy of his own condescending views of the society women who surround him as society itself. Scorsese has softened the novel’s satire of Archer, reserving it instead, through the use of voice-over, for the manners and morals are fashionable New York. For Scorsese, Archer is pure victim - of his background, the claustrophobic matriarchal culture he inhabits  - whereas for Wharton his incapacity plays a key role in the victimisation of Ellen, whose own tragedy as social outcast is given more weight in the novel. (25)

However literary critic Stuart Hutchinson argues the opposite of Cook, he believes that Wharton is far more sympathetic to her male protagonist at the expense of her female characters:  

(May) is another woman Wharton easily labels ‘Diana’ in order to contain her potential sexuality and have her ‘disturbed and shaken out of a cool boyish composure’ when Archer gives her a kiss on the lips. The Age of Innocence could not engage with May who had sexual force, for she would then prevent Wharton’s simple formula contrasting her with Ellen. May has an irrelevant mobility when she offers to surrender Archer to the woman she thinks is still his lover, and she has tenacity when she manipulates Ellen into surrendering Archer. These qualities aside, she is killed off in terms that would invite feminist opprobrium if written by a man: ‘so lacking in imagination so incapable of growth... she went contentedly to her place in the Archer vault’. (26)  

To further his point Hutchinson refers to Wharton’s memoirs A Backward Glance:

Young women taught by their elders to despise the kitchen and linen room, and to substitute acquiring of University degrees for the more complex art of civilized  living...Cold storage...Has done far less harm to the home than the Higher Education. (27)

In contrast to Pam Cook, Village Voice film critic Amy Taubin says that Scorsese is:

…deeply respectful of Wharton’s novel…Scorsese says that what moved him in Wharton’s novel was “the emotion of Newland’s relationship to Ellen and his not being able to fulfill it as he would like to … the things you miss in life or the things you think you miss”… this a film cast in the negative, that it’s not about the décor and the costumes, the funereal profusion of food and flowers, but rather the unseen and unspoken.(28)  

Amy Taubin’s  colleague at the Village Voice, Georgia Brown has a similar assesment:

Scorsese and his collaborator Jay Cocks are almost religiously respectful of Wharton’s novel…. Scorsese inadvertently or not, rescues May from Archer’s – and Wharton’s disdain… She’s wily and clever and, more often than not, right about Archer...The movie makes me feel great pity for wives. (29)

Further more writer and filmmaker Karli Lukas identifies how Scorsese transforms May Welland and Newland  Archer’s wedding from the way it is portrayed in the novel in to a condensed sequence in which they are having their wedding photograph taken. It is the embodiment of May’s ascendancy over Archer :

….this sequence, thereby suggests her increasing power and Newland's lack of ability to 'read her' (to separate fantasy from the reality around him). …The wedding photograph then serves as a kind of trophy of May's, whereby she celebrates her victory over the Countess. It is in these disturbing yet sublime moments of his adaptation of Wharton's novel that Scorsese most clearly demonstrates his talent and status as a great director. He inspires shifts of directorial vision away from more restrictive 'reflective' ways of re-presenting a story, to a mode of address that is much more truthful and revealing about its characters.(30)

As is evident Pam Cook and Owen Glieberman do not believe that Scorsese does justice to the novel. Yet as I have shown there are other critics -  Amy Taubin and Georgia Brown - who disagree with their argumentssentiments. In the conclusion which is to follow I will argue that not only is the adaptation very good at capturing the essence of Wharton’s novel but through the process of transformation and transmutation breathes new life into it .

Conclusion

The Age of Innocence throws up some important questions about the challenges of adaptation. AnIn an interview with Gavin Smith he states:  

It really doesn't get done right in the movies, and I want to do it like a novel … In actuality the details give you the impression that what he (Archer) has to cut through in order to break away from that society. (how about a full stop there?) iIf you don't show it I think you have a sense of why doesn't he just leave. But if you keep adding and keep adding imagery of details, and keep explaining what these details mean, that there is nothing casual about anything, then you begin to realise how difficult it is to him to make a move. (31)

The characters in The Age of Innocence are trapped in social traditions and rituals, the ‘old ways’, because they accept that ‘things were ever thus’ rather than seeing them as social constructs created over generations for the advantage and continuation of  a particular social group. All the members of the group are subjected to scrutiny; individuals are expected to carefully maintain their manners. For those who transgress and attempt to break out there are punishments like social exclusion.

In conclusion I would argue that seeing The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorsese, regardless of the cultural location of the community one comes from, leaves the viewer with a heightened awareness of the tribal rituals beneath the social forms which we all take for granted. Our perception of individuals and the roles they play in order to conform is profoundly cannot but be altered.

For South Asians in the diaspora traditional patriarchal control has reproduced itself in the lives of migrants and their offspring. Women are ‘protected’ because of concerns about moral corruption in an urban context. Femininity is de-sexualised; women are given little opportunity to express desire or yearning openly. Rituals and tradition are seen as a necessity for the integrity of the social order.

Women suffer the greatest scrutiny and control. They are placed in an environment of repression and submission. It is accepted that members of a social group will marry amongst themselves to maintain individual and collective social position. Marriage is a contract linking families rather than just bringing together lovers. If codes are broken the various branches of the family become involved and close in on the transgressors so that tradition is protected and family honour survives.

The Age of Innocence is a  drama which shows the interplay between conformity, patriarchy and ritual. I would argue that Scorsese’s representation of upper class New Yorkers resonates with the institutional arrangements of sections of the South Asian community in Britain. I would also argue that conforming to edicts is as important to the characters in this film as it is to characters in Scorsese’s earlier films, and to members of the South Asian diaspora in Britain. What are edicts? That word has a very specific monarchistic tone for me. I would suggest ‘the dictates of the community is more important than following individual desire’ it is a universal story not just a South Asian one well done it’s over!!!!

FOOTNOTES

1.     Desai, Anita (1971) Bye-bye Blackbird  (novel), Orient Paperbacks

Dhondy, Farrukh (1976) East End at Your Feet (short stories), Macmillan

Kureishi, Hanif (1985) My Beautiful Launderette (screenplay) Faber

Din, Ayub Khan (1999) East is East ( screenplay) Channel 4 Books  Chada,  Gurinder (1993) Bhaji on the Beach (director)  

2.     Sivanandan, A. (1982) A Different Hunger: Writings on Black ResistancePluto Press

Fryer, Peter (1984) Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain: Black

People in Britain Since 1504 Pluto Press; Reprint edition Visram, Rozina (2002) Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History, Pluto Press

3.     Smith, G (Nov/Dec1993) Film Comment  in Brunette,P (ed)  (1999) Martin Scorsese Interviews , University Press of Mississippi.

4.    Bloom, Harold  (2005)  Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations – The Age of Innocence , Chelsea House Publishers

5.         Wharton, Edith (1920) The Age of Innocence (1993) Wordsworth Classic edition

6.         Bentley, Nancy. (2003)  “[Realism, Relativism, and the Discipline of Manners] .” The Age of Innocence: Authoritative Text; Background and Contexts; Sources; Criticism. Ed. Candace Waid.

7.     Werbner, Pnina (1981) 'Manchester Pakistanis: Life styles, ritual and the making of social distinctions', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,

8.     Bentley, Nancy (1995) "'Hunting for the Real': Wharton and the Science of Manners." The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton. Ed. Millicent Bell. Cambridge Companions to Literature. New York: Cambridge UP

9.      Marshall, Scott (1976 ) Edith Wharton on Fim and Television : A History and Filmography , Edith Wharton Review 13.2

10.     Casillo, Robert (2006) Gangster Priest: The Italian American    Cinema of Martin Scorsese, University of Toronto Press

11.     Stanley, Alessandra (28/6/1992) Scorsese, From the Mean Streets to Charm School , New York Times

12.    Scorsese, Martin (1993) Narrator , The Age of Innocence (film)

13.    Scorsese, Martin (1993) Narrator , The Age of Innocence (film)

14.    Persson , Åke (2008) The Mafia in the Drawing Room: Martin Scorsese’s Film Adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Nordic Journal of English Studies

15.    Scorsese, Martin (1993) Narrator , The Age of Innocence (film)

16.    Werbner, Pnina (January 2005)  The Translocation of Culture: Migration, Community, and the Force of Multiculturalism in History – No 48

17.    Scorsese, Martin (1993) Narrator , The Age of Innocence (film)

18.    Scorsese, Martin (1993) Narrator , The Age of Innocence (film)

19.    Scorsese, Martin (1993) Narrator , The Age of Innocence (film)

20.    Scorsese, Martin (1993) Narrator , The Age of Innocence (film)

21.    Scorsese, Martin (1993) Narrator , The Age of Innocence (film)

22.     Tarkovsky, Andrei (1986) Sculpting In Time: Reflections on the Cinema  The Bodley Head Publishers

23.    Bazin, André. (1967) What Is Cinema? Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: University of California Press.

24.    Gleiberman, Owen (24/9/1993) THE AGE OF INNOCENCE review Published in issue #189. EW.Com Entertainment Weeklyhttp://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,308028,00.html

25.    Cook , Pam (February 1994)  Sight & Sound -, BFI Publishing

26.             Hutchinson, Stuart ( 1920 / 1993) Intro to the Wordsworth Classic edition of The Age Innocence          

27.       Wharton, Edith (1934) A Backward Glance, (autobiography)

28.       Taubin, Amy (9/11/93) The Age Of Innocence, The Village Voice

29.    Brown, Georgia (21/9/93) The Age Of Innocence, The Village Voice

30.    Lukas, Karli, (February 2003), Creative Visions: (De) Constructing “The Beautiful” in Scorsese's The Age of Innocence - Senses of Cinema / website

            http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/03/25/age_of_innocence.html.

31.    Smith, G (Nov/Dec1993) Film Comment  in Brunette,P (ed)  (1999) Martin Scorsese Interviews , University Press of Mississippi.

References

Bazin, André. 1967. What Is Cinema? Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: University of California Press.Bentley, Nancy. (2003)  “[Realism, Relativism, and the Discipline of Manners].” The Age of Innocence: Authoritative Text; Background and Contexts; Sources; Criticism. Ed. Candace Waid.

        Bentley, Nancy (1995) "'Hunting for the Real': Wharton and the Science of Manners." The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton. Ed. Millicent Bell. Cambridge Companions to Literature. New York: Cambridge UPBloom, Harold  (2005)  Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations – The Age of Innocence , Chelsea House PublishersBrown, Georgia (21/9/93) The Age Of Innocence, The Village VoiceCasillo, Robert (2006) Gangster Priest: The Italian American

    Cinema of Martin Scorsese, University of Toronto PressChada,  Gurinder (1993) Bhaji on the Beach (director)Cook , Pam (February 1994)  Sight & Sound -, BFI PublishingDesai, Anita (1971) Bye-bye Blackbird  (novel), Orient PaperbacksDin, Ayub Khan (1999) East is East ( screenplay) Channel 4 BooksDhondy, Farrukh (1976) East End at Your Feet (short stories), Macmillan (London, England),Fryer, Peter (1984) Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain: Black Gleiberman, Owen (24/9/1993) THE AGE OF INNOCENCE review Published in issue #189. EW.Com Entertainment Weeklyhttp://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,308028,00.htmlHutchinson, Stuart ( 1920 / 1993) Intro to the Wordsworth Classic edition of The Age InnocenceKureishi, Hanif (1985) My Beautiful Laundrette (screenplay) FaberLukas, Karli, (February 2003), Creative Visions: (De) Constructing “The Beautiful” in Scorsese's The Age of Innocence - Senses of Cinema / website

          http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/03/25/age_of_innocence.html. Marshall, Scott (1976 ) Edith Wharton on Fim and Television : A History and Filmography , Edith Wharton Review 13.2Persson , Åke (2008) The Mafia in the Drawing Room: Martin Scorsese’s Times Film Adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Nordic Journal of English StudiesScorsese, Martin (1993) Narrator , The Age of Innocence (film)Smith, G (Nov/Dec1993) Film Comment  in Brunette,P (ed)  (1999) Martin Scorsese Interviews , University Press of Mississippi.Sivanandan, A. (1982) A Different Hunger: Writings on Black ResistancePluto PressStanley, Alessandra (28/6/1992) Scorsese, From the Mean Streets to Charm School , New York TimesTaubin, Amy (9/11/93) The Age Of Innocence, The Village VoiceTarkovsky, Andrei (1986) Sculpting In Time: Reflections on the Cinema  The Bodley Head Publishers Visram, Rozina (2002) Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History, Pluto Press

        Werbner, Pnina (1981) 'Manchester Pakistanis: Life styles, ritual and the making of social distinctions', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,Werbner, Pnina (January 2005)  The Translocation of Culture: Migration, Community, and the Force of Multiculturalism in History – No 48 Wharton, Edith (1920) The Age of Innocence (1993) Wordsworth Classic edition