Welcome to houseofmirth.de

The one and now only fansite for the movie and book The House of Mirth featuring the wonderful actress Gillian Anderson.

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June 2024 New design, new layout. I felt like redesigning the whole page to make it suitable for current screen resolutions and make it 100% responsive. Enjoy the new design.

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Online articles and information in English and German about the movie.

The House of Mirth Trailer

The Cast

Gillian Anderson

Lily Bart

Gillian Anderson was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Rosemary Alyce (Lane), a computer analyst, and Homer Edward Anderson III, who owned a film post-production company. Gillian started her (…)

Eric Stoltz

Lawrence Selden

Eric Hamilton Stoltz is a theater-trained actor and producer who has starred in both independent and studio films. He was born on September 30, 1961 in Whittier, California, to Evelyn Vawter, (…)

Laura Linney

Bertha Dorset

Laura Leggett Linney was born in New York City on February 5, 1964, into a theatre family. Her father was prominent playwright Romulus Linney. Her mother, Miriam Anderson (Leggett), is a nurse. (…)

Dan Akroyd

Gus Trenor

Daniel Edward Aykroyd was born on July 1, 1952 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to Lorraine Hélène (Gougeon), a secretary from a French-Canadian family, and Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh (…)

Terry Kinney

George Dorset

Terry Kinney, the stage, film and television actor, was born in Lincoln, Illinois and attended Illinois State University. While at university, his friend, the aspiring actor Jeff Perry, took Kinney to (…)

Eleanor Bron

Aunt Peniston

There is one strange, mesmerizing film scene that easily sums up the disturbing fascination Eleanor Bron brought to her characters on stage, TV and in the cinema. This is the classic (…)

Information

Storyline

„The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth,“ warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn’t and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton’s charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.

One of Wharton’s earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears „as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room.“ Indeed, herein lies Lily’s problem. She has, we’re told, „been brought up to be ornamental,“ and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today’s standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of „good“ marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, „poor, miserable, marriageable girls.

Lily’s rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner’s assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. „Once–twice–you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward,“ she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts–some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately–wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it’s hard not to agree with Lily’s own assessment of herself: „I have tried hard–but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.“ Nevertheless, it’s even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. –Melanie Rehak

Production Information 

Director: 
Terence Davies

Writing credits: 
Edith Wharton

Produced by:
Pippa Cross (executive)
Bob Last (executive)
Olivia Stewart
Alan J. Wands (co-producer)

Original Music by:
Adrian Johnston

Cinematography:
Remi Adefarasin

Film Editing:
Michael Parker (III)

Casting:
Kerry Barden

Production Design:
Don Taylor (II)

Art:
Jo Graysmark

Set:
John Bush

Costume Design:
Monica Howe

Production Coordinator:
Mandy McKay

Sound:
Louis Kramer

Line Production:
Laurie Borg

Other Crew:
Jaap Buitendijk – 
still Photographer 

Film Locations:

Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum,
Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Glasgow City Chambers,
Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Theatre Royal,
Glasgow, Scotland, UK
(Opera House interiors)

Glasgow, Scotland, UK
(various scenes)

Scotland, UK

The South, France

Production Community 

Granada Film Productions
Showtime Networks Inc. (US)
Three Rivers Production

Renting Agency

Capitol Film (non-USA, sales)
Channel Four Films (aka Film Four International)(aka Channel 4 TV) (UK)
Diaphana Films (France)
Progres (Benelux)
RCV Film Distribution (NL) (Benelux) 
Arthaus (Deutschland)

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