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Arts & Communication

ARTICLE
The dialogue between languages of painting

and cinema in The Age of Innocence by Martin
Scorsese

Maria V. Tarasova*

Department of Culture and Art History, School for the Humanities, Siberian Federal University,
Krasnoyarsk, Russia

Abstract

After a short survey of the key theories that define the intermediality of film and
the relationship between cinema and painting, the paper focuses on the case
study of The Age of Innocence, a film by Martin Scorsese that exemplifies the
transformations cinematic imagery may undergo under the influence of painting.
Methodologically grounded in the linguistic theory of correlation between
objective and subjective language systems, which cooperate in producing each
utterance, the research approaches painting as a multifaceted objective language
that cinema employs to reference specific worldviews or models of the world.
Comprehension of the analogies between painting and film sheds light on how
and why cultural patterns from other art are recreated in new media, and how
the subjective language of the work of cinematic art is formed in relation to the
*Corresponding author:
Maria V. Tarasova objective languages of other visual arts. The results of the analysis reveal the film
(mvtarasova@sfu-kras.ru) as an intertext with various genres and styles of European painting embedded into
its visual language system. Specifically, the paper reveals how the Netherlands’
Citation: Tarasova MV. The
dialogue between languages of Golden Age portraiture, landscapes, and still-lives, together with several forms of
painting and cinema in The Age of the Impressionism and Art Nouveau styles, compose the objective language of
Innocence by Martin Scorsese. Arts the film. This research contributes new empirical ground to the theoretical studies
& Communication. 2024;2(2):2090.
doi: 10.36922/ac.2090 of the interconnectedness of cinema and painting, providing a wider perspective
on the universal language of visual art.
Received: October 23, 2023
Accepted: January 2, 2024
Keywords: Painting and cinema; Language system of film; Intermediality; Martin
Published Online: May 2, 2024 Scorsese; The Age of Innocence
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s).
This is an Open-Access article
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial License, permitting 1. Introduction
all non-commercial use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, “Any study of the history of film must begin with the cave pictographs,” says the character
1
provided the original work is of George Méliès in Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s film about the groundbreaking film director
properly cited. and prolific innovator in the silent era of cinema. This idea, shared by Scorsese himself, is
Publisher’s Note: AccScience declared in the film that intends to reveal the origins of cinematic art. Although the fact
Publishing remains neutral with that the roots of cinema go deeply into the history of art is undeniable, the conceptual
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional bond between cinema and other art forms remains a subject open for discussion and
affiliations. diverse interpretations, frequently incompatible.

Volume 2 Issue 2 (2024) 1 doi: 10.36922/ac.2090