Edith wharton biography video about helen

Artist/scholar Elizabeth Lennard has managed to evoke the breadth of Edith Wharton’s life and work in a relatively short and vivid film.

Edith Wharton: The Sense of Harmony, a documentary directed Elizabeth Lennard, at the Ninth Annual Berkshire International Film Festival, Lenox, MA., May 29 through June 1.

By Helen Epstein

It’s odd to be writing a review of a fascinating but entirely obscure documentary completed 15 years ago. When Elizabeth Lennard’s 1999 film about Edith Wharton’s life and work was first released, it was neither widely distributed nor seen.

I watched it in the former stables of The Mount where it was chosen as part of the Ninth Annual Berkshire International Film Festival that runs in late spring in Pittsfield and Great Barrington.

Wharton’s almost completely restored estate in Lenox, Massachsusetts (See my piece last summer on The Mount and the tour of its grounds) is the perfect place to watch this doc