The Age of Innocence ** (1934, Irene Dunne, John Boles, Lionel Atwill, Laura Hope Crews, Helen Westley, Julie Haydon) – Classic Movie Review 12,527

RKO’s 1934 film The Age of Innocence is an intriguing but rather unpersuasive Victorian romantic melodrama taken from Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer prize-winning classic 1920 novel, remade by Martin Scorsese in 1993.

Director Philip Moeller’s 1934 RKO black and white film The Age of Innocence is an intriguing but rather unpersuasive Victorian romantic melodrama taken from Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer prize-winning classic 1920 novel, set in the 19th-century.

John Boles stars as an engaged lawyer, Newland Archer, whose career is plunged into jeopardy in 1870s Manhattan when he falls dangerously for divorcée Countess Ellen Olenska (Irene Dunne), just when he is supposed to be marrying the right kind of gel in pretty, well-connected May Welland (Julie Haydon).

The winning star duo team of Irene Dunne and John Boles from the 1932 Back Street can’t inject enough real or convincing emotion into a ponderous, ordinary weepie that was already outmoded in 1934. But it does look good, thanks to James Van Trees’s photography, and some of the support performances (Lionel Atwill, Laura Hope Crews and especially Helen Westley in a splendidly larger-than-life turn as Mrs Mingott) are unusually winning. It is narrated by John Boles.

Wharton’s work came back into fashion in the 1980s and this book was remade by Martin Scorsese in 1993, as The Age of Innocence, and it is fascinating to compare the two versions.

Broadway stage director Philip Moeller went on to make the 1935 Break of Hearts with Katharine Hepburn, his only other film.

Also in the cast are Herbert Yost, Teresa Maxwell-Conover, Edith Van Cleve, Leonard Carey, Harry Beresford, and Herbert Bunston.

The screenplay by Sarah Y Mason and Victor Heerman is based on the 1920 novel The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton and the 1928 play The Age of Innocence by Margaret Ayer Barnes. Sarah Y Mason and Victor Heerman went on to write the screenplay for the 1935 Break of Hearts.

The Age of Innocence is directed by Philip Moeller, runs 81 minutes, is made and released by RKO Radio Pictures, is written by Sarah Y Mason (screenplay) and Victor Heerman (screenplay), based on the 1920 novel The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton and the 1928 play The Age of Innocence by Margaret Ayer Barnes, is shot in black and white by James Van Trees, is produced by Pandro S Berman, and is scored by Max Steiner.

The release date was September 14, 1934.

Students of film posters will note that, although Dunne has top billing, Boles is pictured on top of her on the poster.

There had previously been a 1924 silent film version starring Beverly Bayne and a 1928 Broadway stage adaptation starring Katharine Cornell.

The cast are Irene Dunne as Countess Ellen Olenska, John Boles as Newland Archer, Lionel Atwill as Julius Beaufort, Helen Westley as Granny Manson Mingott, Laura Hope Crews as Augusta Welland, Julie Haydon as May Welland, Herbert Yost as Howard Welland, Teresa Maxwell-Conover as Mrs Archer, Edith Van Cleve as Jane Archer, Leonard Carey as the butler Jasper, Harry Beresford as Museum Guard, and Herbert Bunston as W J Letterblair.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,527

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