The dialogue between languages of painting and cinema in The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorsese

After a short survey of the key theories that define the intermediality of film and the relationship between cinema and painting, the paper focuses on the case study of The Age of Innocence, a film by Martin Scorsese that exemplifies the transformations cinematic imagery may undergo under the influence of painting. Methodologically grounded in the linguistic theory of correlation between objective and subjective language systems, which cooperate in producing each utterance, the research approaches painting as a multifaceted objective language that cinema employs to reference specific worldviews or models of the world. Comprehension of the analogies between painting and film sheds light on how and why cultural patterns from other art are recreated in new media, and how the subjective language of the work of cinematic art is formed in relation to the objective languages of other visual arts. The results of the analysis reveal the film as an intertext with various genres and styles of European painting embedded into its visual language system. Specifically, the paper reveals how the Netherlands’ Golden Age portraiture, landscapes, and still-lives, together with several forms of the Impressionism and Art Nouveau styles, compose the objective language of the film. This research contributes new empirical ground to the theoretical studies of the interconnectedness of cinema and painting, providing a wider perspective on the universal language of visual art.