Scorsese's adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel is itself delicious, with its traveling camera that would make Max Ophuls weep, rooms that fill with people by invisible dissolves, editing that is as precise as Wharton's language itself: "a world so precarious, its harmony could be shattered by a whisper." In this story of passions held at bay in old New York society, the camera makes the passionate moves the people cannot; for them, only the gaze. "In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs," Wharton wrote. Food is invariably one of those signs. The table is a site for teaching lessons, cementing conspiracies-the more elaborate the spread, the more accompli the fête. As much as Scorsese loves food in his films is just how ironically unappetizing the beautifully foregrounded dishes are to Newland Archer (Daniel Day Lewis) and the Countess Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). Opposite to Tom Jones, here food, like sex, is appropriated as a weapon of control.