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Director Cameo (1)
Originally to be released in fall of 1992, but was held back by over a year to allow director Martin Scorsese more time to edit.
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The lady standing to the right of Winona Ryder and admiring her engagement ring at the Beauforts' ball (just before Archer approaches and bows) is Tamasin Day-Lewis, sister of Daniel Day-Lewis, who was in town to visit her brother and drafted by Martin Scorsese to take the part. She's better known as the author of a series of cookbooks.
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The interior of Mrs. Mingott's house was filmed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house in downtown Troy, NY, home to about 35 men at the time. Setup and filming took approximately three weeks and was done while school was still in session. The first floor was the only one used for filming and during shoots members of the house had to remain silent upstairs or leave the house. The shot of the house as a solitary structure on a small hill is movie magic, as the house is surrounded on both sides by other buildings.
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The film is dedicated to Charles Scorsese, father of director Martin Scorsese, who died just before the film was completed. He and his wife Catherine Scorsese (the director's mother) have a cameo appearance in the scene at the station.
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Just past the middle of the movie, an exterior image of New York is shown. One of the buildings has "Schoonmaker's Painters Supply Store" painted on it. Thelma Schoonmaker has been Martin Scorsese's editor for years.
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Martin Scorsese set up a deal with 20th Century-Fox to write the screenplay with Jay Cocks. Fox attached a budget of $32 million to the project. Before anything came of it, however, Fox head Joe Roth told Scorsese that he would be first in line to see the picture, but he just couldn't finance it. Universal then stepped in, although it was not prepared to spend any more than $30 million. Finally Mark Canton of Columbia - with whom Scorsese had made Goodfellas - offered the full budget.
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Director Martin Scorsese had said that this is the "most violent" film he's ever made, an obvious reference to the emotional versus physical states of being. Ironically, for a director who is well known for over-the-top violent fare like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, this film happens to be Scorsese's first to earn a "PG rating" since New York, New York.
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Jay Cocks first gave his friend Martin Scorsese a copy of Edith Wharton's novel back in 1980. At the time, he told Scorsese, "When you do that romantic piece, this one is you". It took Scorsese seven years to finally get around to reading the book.
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The three lead actors - Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder - were all Martin Scorsese's first choices for the parts.
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The painting of two Native Americans about to kill a young woman is a depiction of the death of Jane McRea. The event took place in 1777 in upstate New York, shortly before the battle of Saratoga, and was a key event in rallying Patriot militia. Jane McRea was the woman on whom James Fenimore Cooper based the character of Cora in "Last of the Mohicans". This book was made into the film The Last of the Mohicans, which also starred Daniel Day-Lewis.
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2 months after the October 1993 opening of The Age of Innocence, Michelle Pfeiffer left Daniel Day-Lewis behind to tempt another married man: Homer Simpson. In the Season 5 episode "The Last Temptation of Homer" (which aired December 9, 1993), she played Homer's new coworker Mindy, who had the same effect on him that she had on Newland Archer.
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The opening scene takes place during a performance of Faust at the Academy of Music, which was the main opera house in New York City prior to the opening of the Metropolitan Opera in 1883. Faust was the first opera staged at the Met when it opened in October 1883.
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About 20 minutes into the film, Sillerton Jackson ('Alec McCowan') endures a mediocre meal at the Archer home. In Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy McCowan's character, Chief Inspector Oxford, suffers the same fate (twice) at the hands of his wife (Vivien Merchant).
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The first painting which Newland Archer encounters after greeting Regina Beaufort at the post-opera ball (depicting a man in a harlequin costume holding a dueling sword) is "The Duel After a Masquerade Ball", by Jean-Léon Gérôme, painted in 1857.
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In 1993, when the movie was first released, a publicity still of Michelle Pfeiffer and 'Daniel-Day Lewis' in an embrace had been printed in US Magazine. Pfeiffer was holding a roll of Certs breath mints and it had not been edited out of the photo. It was too late to correct the photo so the issue was sent to news stands with the erroneous photo in them.
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Co-stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis both share the same birthday in real life.
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