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Arts & Communication Dialogue of painting and cinema in The Age of Innocence

this context, painting signifies the artificial nature of both language of the Netherlands’ group portrait genre of the
time zones recreated in the film. Golden Age. The language signifies a specific vision of the
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Since most of the scenes in The Age of Innocence take world, a worldview shared by all these characters.
place indoors, the interior design serves as a system of With their straight backs, similar features, and ability
indexical signs that communicate the message of the scene to look alike even in close-ups, the personages of Hals’
more effectively than the dialogues. The human figures portraiture represent a certain kind of human being. Their
are usually outlined within frames of walls that enclose mission lies in belonging to a society and in devotion to
characters and keep them immovable in certain locations a particular social group. These people worship the social
and fixed positions. The walls of the rooms in the film are values of their class and are ready to protect them. For
covered with paintings. An accurate reconstruction of a instance, in the painting The Officers of the St. George
wallboard tradition of hanging paintings, typical for the Militia Company (1639), the whole group of characters is
19 century, demanded placing pictures close to each other unanimous in embodying the value of protecting the native
th
without leaving much empty space. As a result, when the land, while The Regentesses of the Old Men’s Almshouse
film’s characters enter the space of any room, it is already (1664) represents the value of mercy and looking after
populated by other characters – the ones depicted in the deprived. The majority of Hals’ group portraits are
paintings on the walls. It multiplies the space dimensions structured according to a frieze-like composition. The
and makes the action in the scene more complicated due to characters’ bodies form a composition that resembles the
the increasing number of characters and interconnections shield made of people protecting their background.
between them. The composition of shots based on Scorsese employs the same composition in staging the
intersections of various pictorial spaces produces scenes scene at the Van der Luydens’ living room when Newland
where a film’s character “steps into” the frame of a painting Archer and his mother pay a visit to them to request a
and finds oneself surrounded by characters of another favor to support Ellen Olenska. In this scene, the figures
picture, made in oil on canvas. The characters acting in of the aristocratic couple are positioned parallel to each
cinematographic “reality” relate to the characters of the other and to the vertical borders of the screen. The Van
imaginary world of paintings. The visual field of shots der Luydens remain static and mute while the voice-over
and scenes in The Age of Innocence is made in accordance describes their personalities and the resolute position
with “a picture in a picture” principle, with paintings as they have in the city’s ruling class. The shot looks like a
“windows” that serve as getaways into other dimensions. picture. In this case, the objective language of painting
This method of staging scenes erases boundaries between has been employed to emphasize Van der Luydens’ ability
characters inhabiting spheres of painting and cinema. to speak without words, to declare the final will merely
Painted personages become more real, while protagonists by their position – not only in the scene but also in the
of the cinematic story tend to appear more illusory and society.
unreal. As a rule, the characters of Hals’ group portraits are
6. The language of the Dutch painting of painted against a dark (or almost black) background. The
same cinematic decision is made in The Age of Innocence
the Golden Age in cinematic modeling of to create the living rooms, dining rooms, and offices of
the “old world” in The Age of Innocence the “old” New York. Moreover, the very word “gloomy” is
Among the objective languages of painting employed in constantly repeated in the film to define the environment of
The Age of Innocence, Dutch portraiture of the Golden Age the characters that belong to this world. The darkness not
functions as a model for the “old New York” characters, only signifies the isolation from the light of life’s pleasures
for example, the Van der Luydens, the most respected but it also symbolizes the illusory values shared by the “old”
members of the city’s high society, and Newland Archer’s New Yorkers. In the motion picture, the twilight indicates
mother and sister. The iconography of the group portrait the world inhabited by ghosts whose power is as delusive
genre was established by the Dutch painter Frans Hals. as their own shadows.
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The facial types, postures, and compositional modes used A peculiar sign of the evanescence of the old world is
by Hals in his paintings may be determined as patterns for porcelain. The scene of the reception organized at the Van
shaping the mentioned characters and staging the scenes der Luydens’ mansion for Countess Olenska begins with
with them in The Age of Innocence. I suggest that the term the demonstration of the best family dinnerware. Since it
“the Dutch Past” could be introduced to denote the special belongs to the Van der Luydens’ Dutch ancestors, it is an
time zone in the “old” New York establishment in the film. indexical sign that denotes the “old world.” The porcelain is
This time zone is created in accordance with the objective painted in a delicate style typical for Dutch glasswork. This

Volume 2 Issue 2 (2024) 6 doi: 10.36922/ac.2090