The Age of Innocence · reception & legacy

1993 · Martin Scorsese

How The Age of Innocence has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

In 1993 it was received as a respectful curiosity — 'Scorsese does Edith Wharton' — earning good reviews but soft box office and a vague sense of being minor Marty. Three decades on it's routinely argued to be one of his very best films, a reappraisal cinephiles love to feel smug about.

What's debated

The perennial fight: is this secretly Scorsese's best film — his 'most violent,' as he put it, just with cutlery and opera glasses instead of guns — or a beautiful outlier that only contrarians rank over Goodfellas?

Its footprint

Scorsese's own line — that it's 'the most violent film I ever made' — is quoted more than anything in the script, and the Saul and Elaine Bass title sequence of blooming flowers is a touchstone of its own. It's become the go-to exhibit whenever anyone argues repression on screen can hit harder than bloodshed.

Where it stands

A canon climber par excellence — once the 'underrated Scorsese' pick, now so beloved on Letterboxd that calling it underrated has itself become a running joke.

★ Did you know? Scorsese dedicated the film to his father, Luciano Charles Scorsese, who appeared in small roles in many of his films and died in 1993, the year of its release.

Named by the director

Influences Martin Scorsese has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

The Leopard (1963) — Scorsese repeatedly cited Visconti's epic of a fading aristocracy as a model for rendering a vanished social world in ritual and detail.
Senso (1954) — He named Visconti's operatic period melodrama as a touchstone for the film's lush, doomed romanticism.
The Heiress (1949) — Scorsese pointed to Wyler's drawing-room drama as proof that devastating emotional violence could happen entirely within period-piece manners.
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) — He cited Welles's chronicle of a great family's decline — with its narration and mourned old world — as a direct reference point.
Max Ophüls — Scorsese cited Ophüls's gliding camera and tragic romanticism, particularly in films like Madame de..., as an influence on the film's style.