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.
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