Age of Consent (film).html



Age of Consent
theatrical poster (Spain)
Directed by	Michael Powell
Produced by	Michael Powell James Mason
Written by	Norman Lindsay (novel) Peter Yeldham
Starring	James Mason Helen Mirren Jack MacGowran
Music by	Peter Sculthorpe (original / restored) Stanley Myers (replacement)
Cinematography	Hannes Staudinger
Editing by	Anthony Buckley
Distributed by	Columbia (US)
Release date(s)	March 1969 (premiere-Brisbane) 14 May (Australia) 15 November (UK) 8 March 1970 (US)
Running time	103 min. / 98 min. (US)
Country	Australia
Language	English
Budget	AUD$1.2 million[1]
IMDb profile

Age of Consent (1969) is an Australian film which was the penultimate feature film directed by British director Michael Powell. The romantic comedy-drama stars James Mason, who also co-produced it with Powell, Helen Mirren, in her first major film role, and veteran Irish character actor Jack MacGowran. The screenplay by Peter Yeldham was adapted from the 1935 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Norman Lindsay. Lindsay was also the subject of the 1994 film Sirens by John Duigan.^[1][2]

Plot

Bradley Morahan (James Mason) is an Australian artist who feels he has become jaded by success and life in New York City. He decides that he needs to regain the edge he had as a young artist and returns to Australia.

He sets up in a shack on the shore of a small, sparsely-inhabited island on the Great Barrier Reef. There he meets young Cora Ryan (Helen Mirren), who has grown up wild, with her only relative, her difficult, gin-guzzling grandmother 'Ma' (Neva Carr-Glynn). Cora sells Bradley what she has caught in the sea and later a chicken, which she has stolen from his spinster neighbor Isabel Marley (Andonia Katsaros). When he is suspected of being the thief, he pays Isabel and gets Cora to promise not to steal anymore. To help her save enough money to fulfill her dream of becoming a hairdresser in Brisbane, he pays her to be his model. She reinvigorates him, becoming his artistic muse.

Bradley's work is disrupted when his sponging longtime "friend" Nat Kelly (Jack MacGowran) shows up. Nat is hiding from the police over alimony he owes. When Bradley refuses to give him a loan, Nat invites himself to stay with him. After several days, Bradley's patience becomes exhausted. Luckily, the problem is solved for him. Nat romances Isabel, hoping to get some money from her. Instead, she unexpectedly ravishes him. The next day, he hastily departs the island, but not before stealing Bradley's money and some of his drawings.

Then Ma catches Cora posing nude for Bradley and accuses him of carrying on with her underage granddaughter. Bradley protests that he has done nothing improper; finally, he gives her the little money he has left to get her to go away.

When Cora discovers that Ma has found her hidden cache of money, she chases after her. In the ensuing struggle, Ma falls down a hill and breaks her neck. Fortunately, the local policeman sees no reason to investigate, since the old woman was known to be frequently drunk.

Later that night, Cora goes to Bradley's shack, but is disappointed when he seems to view her only as his model. When she runs out, Bradley follows her into the water. There, she finally gets him to see her as a desirable young woman.

Cast

James Mason as Bradley Morahan Helen Mirren as Cora Ryan Jack MacGowranas Nat Kelly Neva Carr-Glyn as Ma Ryan Andonia Katsaros as Isabel Marley Michael Boddy as Hendricks Harold Hopkins as Ted Farrell Slim DeGrey as Cooley Max Meldrum as TV Interviewer Frank Thring as Godfrey, the Art Dealer Clarissa Kaye-Mason as Meg Judith McGrath as Grace

Helen Mirren as Cora Ryan

Cast notes:

• Helen Mirren, who was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and had played supporting roles in three films, was 22 at the time the filming of Age of Consent began.^[3]
• James Mason met his future wife Clarissa Kaye-Mason (who was "Clarissa Kaye" at the time) on this film when she played the part of an ex-girlfriend of Mason's. Their scene together was filmed in bed, and Kaye, who was recovering from pneumonia, had a temperature of 103 degrees. After the filming, Mason began corresponding with Kaye, and the two were married in 1971, and remained so until Mason's death in 1984.^[1]

Production

Before filming began on Age of Consent, director Michael Powell said about it:

My next film is the story of a painter who believes that he will no longer paint and of a girl who persuades him to begin again...He will probably end up painting her; but to see a painter sit down and paint a girl, this could be exciting, but I had the hardest time explaining to my scriptwriter that this didn't excite me at all. What interested me was the problem of Creation and the fact that this creation in the case of the painter was very physical. He will have to struggle, to fight, even more strongly than he will move away from reality. It will be a slightly bitter comedy that I will produce with James Mason who will play the leading role.^[1]

Powell and Mason had wanted to work together in the past, on I Know Where I'm Going, but had not been able to come to an agreement on billing and Mason was unwilling to go on location to Scotland. After Age of Consent, Powell tried to recruit Mason for his version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, a project which never came to fruition. ^[4]

Filming began in March 1968 in Albion Park race course and elsewhere in Brisbane, Australia, with location filming on Dunk Island and Purtaboi Island on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, and interiors shot at Ajax Filmcentre in Sydney.^[5][1][6][7]

Age of Consent ran into trouble with censors in the U.K., who cut the opening bedroom scene between James Mason and Clarissa Kaye, and also one of Mirren's nude swimming scenes. Columbia Pictures executives also removed Peter Sculthorpe's original score and replaced it with one by Stanley Myers. Both the original score and both cut scenes were reinstated when the film was restored in 2005.

Reception

Contemporary critical response to Age of Consent was not positive, with Penolope Mortimer in The Observer writing:

I tremendously admire James Mason and believed, until I saw Age of Consent, that he could do no wrong...It is best forgiven and forgotten.^[1]

and the reviewer in Variety writing:

The film has plenty of corn, is sometimes too slow, repetitious and badly edited...Yet [it] has immense charm, and the photography and superb scenery make it a good travelog ad for the Great Barrier Reef.^[1]

Michael Powell himself thought the film had turned out to be too comedic: "A sensual comedy. Not a big success, but interesting anyway."^[1]

Notes

video cover

External links

• Age of Consent at the Internet Movie Database
• Age of Consent at the TCM Movie Database
• Age of Consent at Allmovie
• Reviews and articles at the Powell & Pressburger Pages
• Age of Consent at the National Film and Sound Archive

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