The film, like the novel, indicts the morals and mores of New York’s social elite through the grueling tale of a fragile woman who becomes a victim of social prejudice and self-inflicted shame.

The period recreation is meticulous, but Davies’ adaptation is so precise and his strategy so austere that the film’s critique also becomes applicable to the present. Davies builds a mood of omniscient dread with a claustrophobic mise en scène. Though based on a prestigious literary source, Davies (who also wrote the screenplay) has made a personal work that bears testimony to his distinctive theme, visual style, poetic languor, and grace. The ensemble is headed by Gillian Anderson (of TV’s “The X-Files” fame), Laura Linney, Dan Aykroyd, and Eric Stoltz, all estimable actors but not necessarily associated with mainstream Hollywood. “The House of Mirth” is Davies’ most accessible and commercial film to date (grossing about $2 million in the U.S.), largely due to its casting.

In 1918, there was a silent film adaptation, “The House of Mirth’’ (‘’La Maison du Brouillard’’), made by French director Albert Capellani and starring Katherine Harris Barrymore it’s considered to be lost. In 1906, “The House of Mirth” was adapted to the stage by Edith Wharton herself and Clyde Fitch. Times hailed it as “a novel of remarkable power whose varied elements are harmoniously blended.”ĭavies’ version was not the first stage or screen presentation of the book. Wharton’s working title for the book was “The Year of the Rose.” The final title derives from Ecclesiastes 7:4: “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” Set against the backdrop of New York circa 1890s, the text places its tragic heroine, Lily Bart, in a society described as “hot-house of traditions and conventions.” Upon publication, the N.Y. As the critic Rob Nelson wrote: “The ‘masterpiece’s tasteful reserve–the aesthetic that allows the comfy feeling that the plight of characters in corsets and cummerbunds has little to do with our own–remains in aptly short supply.” Davies also refrains from the excessive voice-over narration (by Joanne Woodward) that marred Scorsese’s Age of Innocence, an over-stylized feature to begin with, made even more detached by the mediated narrator. Viewers expecting a middlebrow Merchant-Ivory production (“Room with a View,” “Howards End”) or Masterpiece Theatre style were disappointed with Davies’ version. Davies treats with respect but not slavish reverence this novel of mores and manners, which was Wharton’s first important fiction. Adapted for the screen from Edith Wharton’s beloved 1905 novel, Terence Davies The House of Mirth is a much stronger film than his previous feature, “The Neon Bible.” It is also more satisfying than “The Age of Innocence,” Scorsese’s 1993 version of Edith Wharton’s other famous book.

The house of mirth review