Nominated for five Academy Awards® including a win for Best Costume Design, Martin Scorsese's 1993 adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel is set in the elegant milieu of the oldest and richest families in 1870s New York. Marriages are like treaties between nations, their purpose not to cement romance or produce children, but to provide for the orderly transmission of wealth between the generations. Against this backdrop we meet society scion Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis), who is engaged to the beautiful but conventional May Welland (Winona Ryder). But his well-ordered life is upset when he meets May's cousin, the independent-minded Countess Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). With all the forces of New York's grand society conspiring to thwart their love, Newland and the Countess barely contain their primal passion as they struggle to believe that love can really conquer all.
