to exclude those who were not. The screenwriters offer a variation on what Wharton writes about the use of a carriage--one's own carriage--to arrive and to leave:
It was one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it (Wharton 4).
In both the film and the novel, all the important characters are introduced as they sit in their opera boxes and again at the reception at the Beaufort house after the concert. The novelist and the filmmakers introduce new characters in much the same way--by describing them through their position in society, showing in the written word and in the spoken word of the omniscient film "voice" that what is being presented is actually one example of a series of repeated activities--such concerts take place all t
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