The Age Of Innocence Details

A rising young lawyer in late 19th-century New York falls in love with a woman in the throes of a divorce. Prevented from marrying her by high society's moral constraints, he marries someone else, but continues to see his true love. John Boles and Irene Dunne, who made such a hit together in the wonderfully sudsy Back Street, star in this bowdlerisation of Edith Wharton's famous novel, which is reduced to a small-scale and dreary melodrama under the first-time direction of Philip Moeller. Those who know the novel and/or Martin Scorsese's superb film version should avoid it at all costs.

A deft study of a repressed society with some effective set-pieces, let down by an insufficiently dramatized narrative; the emotional weight of the film is carried not by the actors, but by the voice-over, which severely limits its impact.