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Popular Culture Review
quarter of the nineteenth century, seeking the aid of the New York
Historical Society, the Library of Congress, Edith Wharton scholars, and
art historians. Also consulted were Lily Lodge and Letitia Baldridge for
etiquette; David R. McFadden, curator of decorative arts at the CooperHewitt Museum, for table settings; and Rick Ellis for food (Helmetag).
In addition, Scorsese’s and Jay Cocks’ published “portrait” of the film, a
glossy coffee table book, reproduces dozens of late-nineteenth-century
portraits, paintings, and photographs used as models for the film’s
hairstyles, costumes, set designs, and set dressings (Scorsese & Cocks).
Moreover, in writing the screenplay, Scorsese and his co
screenwriter Cocks made as great an effort to be faithful to Wharton’s
novel as Scorsese did to achieve historical accuracy in the film itself
Rather than restaging the significant events in the Newland/Ellen love
story in new venues as had been done in the RKO film, the ScorseseCocks screenplay follows the novel in nearly every regard. Much of the
dialogue is lifted directly from the novel, and perhaps most significantly,
the screenplay calls for voiceover narration, delivered by Joanne
Woodward in the finished film, most of which is taken verbatim from
Wharton’s text. The voiceover narration was included so as to give the
film Wharton’s distinct narrative voice, as part of Scorsese’s primary
goal of “’re-creat[ing] for a viewing audience the experience [he] had
reading the book’” (Taubin 62; see also Martin Scorsese Interviewed;
Christie).
In the execution, Scorsese’s film is an opulent visual feast, the
screen constantly filled with an overwhelming array of artifacts of
another time and of a long extinct social milieu; the characters’ homes
are dense with decor, the women’s costumes are elaborate, draped
constructions of pleats, laces, ribbons, velvets and satins, and in the
film’s seven meals, elegantly punctuating the narrative at regular
intervals, the servin