The House of Mirth

Introduced by Michael Barker, Co-President of Sony Pictures Classics

Dir. Terence Davies. 2000, U.S. 140 mins. 35mm. With Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Dan Aykroyd, Eleanor Bron, Anthony LaPaglia, Laura Linney. Davies’s magnificent, faithful adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel is a sumptuous triumph. Its beating, battered heart belongs to Anderson, who miraculously evokes Wharton’s tragic heroine Lily Bart, a social butterfly whose position in turn-of-the-century upper-class New York City proves precarious after her financial situations take a turn for the worse—and she refuses to compromise her virtue or her romantic idealism. Davies’s adeptness at verbal wit and aching melancholy are on grand display throughout The House of Mirth, one of his greatest films. Anderson’s performance—a study in precisely maintained appearances that gradually crumble—is one of the cinema’s great embodiments of the ironic toll human virtue takes on the body and the soul. 

Tickets: $17.50 / $12 senior and students / $10 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission.