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

for the very first time, he finds himself surrounded by image of a woman with a parasol that a painter is touching
her belongings. In this scene, works of art from Ellen with his brush. As a shade of recognition goes through his
Olenska’s own collection take the leading roles. Scorsese mind, Newland raises his head and sees that the artist is
noted that “When Newland visits Elena’s house for the first actually painting Ellen, who is sitting on a bench in the
time. we had to let a modern audience know that there park. With her parasol and a book, a new haircut, and
was something very different about this woman from the a specific posture, the figure of Ellen is made as a direct
paintings she had on her walls.” 50, p.189 The hostess herself is allusion to the female character in A Sunday Afternoon on
absent in this scene, which marks the start of the Newland the Island of La Grand Jatte (1886) by Georges Seurat. The
Archer’s self-delusive game of perceiving artificial objects painting, now housed in the Boston Art Institute, represents
and fictional painted personages as substitutes for Ellen Neo-Impressionism, a style of painting that supersedes
Olenska. The scene is staged so that on entering the Impressionism in France. Neo-Impressionist paintings are
room Newland “steps into” an unusual painting. Scorsese composed according to strict mathematical rules. In this
mentions this particular picture as a part of the collection picture, Seurat tells a visual story about the inevitable laws
of Italian pre-Impressionist paintings of the Macchiaioli of life as a cage, although made of gold. The worldview
School he brought to the film and described it as a “seascape envisaged in the painting reflects the kind of life the main
painted on a very long plank of wood.” 50, p.189 Specifically, characters of The Age of Innocence chose to live when they
Scorsese stages this scene against the painting Woman condemned themselves to follow societal rules. Georges
Outdoors (1866) by Giovanni Fattori. As the protagonist Seurat’s painting style also allows the filmmaker to reveal
moves along the painted coastline, his slow movement the multilayered meanings of understatement, unspoken
transfers him to the distant but alluring world of the seaside words, and suppressed feelings in the relationship between
filled with sounds of breaking waves and smells of sea air. Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska. The painting is an
The atmosphere reconstructed in the painting contrasts art of silence, as it speaks without sound. Therefore, the
with Newland’s typical habitat, where he is always placed objective language of painting is so significant in The Age
inside a room box, narrow and airless. The breath of fresh of Innocence, a cinematic story about people who cannot
air that he feels from the painted shore is also a metaphor explain themselves.
for a different world the owner of the painting represents. In Impressionist paintings, one of the main characters
As he advances to the right part of the seascape, a woman is the sun. Sun reflections and flashes of sunlight penetrate
appears, painted, seated on the seashore. The face of this landscapes and portraits made by Impressionists. In The
woman is not painted in detail, which is standard practice Age of Innocence, the sun functions as an indexical sign
for Impressionists. For instance, in paintings by Claude of Madame Olenska. In the final scene of the film, when
Monet, faceless figures are indexical signs of the obliterated Newland arrives in Paris with his son, who brings his
individuality and the pantheistic mergence with nature. father to the house where Ellen lives, Newland pauses and,
For the protagonist of The Age of Innocence, the encounter instead of going upstairs, stays in the courtyard and gazes
with a vague image of a female without a face, one who is at the windows, trying to identify the ones that belong to
a part of the free world of the sea, light, wind, open spaces, Ellen’s apartment. The sun’s reflection in the closing window
and fresh air, turns out to be more important than meeting blinds Newland, who, in response, smiles and shakes his
the real woman.
head when he understands the meaning of this sign. To
In another scene of the film, a cinematic version of a Newland, the sun appears as the only visible inhabitant of
similar seascape is recreated onscreen when Newland sees the Parisian house, as a substitute for the invisible woman
Ellen Olenska herself standing by the “real” sea, but he behind the closed windows. Communication by means
pauses to approach her. The countess stands with her back of sunshine proves to be enough for old lovers, whose
toward the protagonist, and, as he pauses, the possibility encounters are conceivable only in the imaginary world of
of their encounter flows away as the ship sails behind the fantasies and dreams.
lighthouse, and an imaginary female character is denied a The evening shades and twilight in scenes of the Archers’
final chance to obtain a face. honeymoon in Paris are created in the film by applying the

Madame Olenska is represented as a character from objective language of cityscapes by Camille Pissarro, such
an Impressionist painting once again in the scene staged as Montmartre Boulevard (1897) and Opera Avenue (1898).
in the Boston Public Garden. As the scene opens, we see Scorsese confessed that the scenes in Paris were made with
Newland watching an artist who is working on a plain-air the intention to remind viewers of Impressionist paintings.
and is painting a panorama of the park with several figures When Newland and his young wife are driving by cart
of people resting in it. Newland’s attention is caught by an along the streets of evening Paris, this scene is filmed in

Volume 2 Issue 2 (2024) 8 doi: 10.36922/ac.2090