Taglines: Let yourself go…. they do!
Age of Consent movie storyline. Past his prime and in search of inspiration, the famous but disillusioned Australian painter, Bradley Morahan (James Mason), decides to jolt his stale creativity by trading his tedious New York City lifestyle for a serene existence in his homeland. Marooned on Queensland’s peaceful Dunk Isle on the Great Barrier Reef, the grizzled artist has an exciting and wonderfully fortuitous encounter with the alluring young islander, Cora (Dame Helen Mirren), who becomes his enchanting model. Suddenly, Bradley finds himself brimming with splendid new ideas. Could the untamed Cora be his long-awaited muse?
Age of Consent (also known as Norman Lindsay’s Age of Consent) is a 1969 Australian comedy-drama film directed by Michael Powell. The film stars James Mason (co-producer with Powell), Helen Mirren in her first major film role, and Jack MacGowran, and features actress Neva Carr Glyn. The screenplay by Peter Yeldham was adapted from the 1938 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Norman Lindsay, who died the year this film was released.
About the Production
Norman Lindsay’s novel had been published in 1938 and was banned in Australia. A film version was announced in 1961 by producer Oscar Nichols, who said he wanted Dan O’Herlihy and Glynis Johns to star. In 1962 Michael Pate had the rights and he eventually brought in Michael Powell. They hired Peter Yeldham to write the adaptation.
Several changes were made from Lindsay’s novel, including shifting the location from New South Wales to the Barrier Reef and making the artist a success instead of a failure. The bulk of the budget was provided by Columbia Pictures in London.
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.”
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.
It originally was intended to cast an unknown 17-year-old Australian actress opposite Mason but in the end 22-year-old Helen Mirren was chosen. James Mason met his future wife Clarissa Kaye on this film; she played the part of Meg, Bradley’s ex-girlfriend in Australia. Their scene together was filmed in bed, and Kaye, who was recovering from pneumonia, had a temperature of 103 °F (39 °C). After the filming, Mason began corresponding with Kaye, and the two were married in 1971, and remained so until Mason’s death in 1984. She was sometimes referred to as Clarissa Kaye-Mason.
Filming began in March 1968 in Albion Park racecourse and elsewhere in Brisbane, with location filming on Dunk Island and Purtaboi Island on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, and interiors shot at Ajax Film Centre in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. Underwater moving picture photography was undertaken by Ron & Valerie Taylor as their first work for a feature film.
Age of Consent (1969)
Directed by: Michael Powell
Starring: James Mason, Helen Mirren, Jack MacGowran, Neva Carr Glyn, Andonia Katsaros, Michael Boddy, Harold Hopkins, Slim De Grey, Max Meldrum, Clarissa Kaye, Judith McGrath
Screenplay by: Peter Yeldham
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Hannes Staudinger
Film Editing by: Anthony Buckley
Art Direction by: Dennis Gentle
Music by: Peter Sculthorpe (Australia), Stanley Myers (UK)
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: March 27, 1969 (Australia), November 15, 1969 (UK), March 8, 1970 (US)
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