What 1993 Scorsese film features Daniel Day-Lewis as a 19th-century lawyer?

The Age of Innocence is the 1993 Martin Scorsese film featuring Daniel Day-Lewis as the 19th-century lawyer Newland Archer. The character is a wealthy New York society attorney caught between social duty and personal desire.

The film adapts Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1920 novel of the same name. Set in 1870s New York high society, it follows Archer’s engagement to the conventional May Welland while he becomes increasingly drawn to May’s cousin, the unconventional Countess Ellen Olenska.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays Ellen Olenska and Winona Ryder plays May Welland. The film’s restrained romance is shaped by the rigid manners, gossip, and expectations of the period’s upper class. Archer’s legal career and social position make him especially aware of the consequences of challenging those rules.

Although The Age of Innocence is often described primarily as a historical romantic drama, it is also a detailed portrait of social conformity. Scorsese used elaborate costumes, interiors, music, and narration to recreate the world of Wharton’s novel. The film earned four Academy Award nominations, winning Best Costume Design.