AGE OF CONSENT (1969)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Michael Powell

SCREENWRITER: Peter Yeldham

FILM STARS: James Mason, Helen Mirren, Jack MacGowran, Neva Carr Glyn, Andonia Katsaros, Michael Boddy, Harold Hopkins, Slim De Grey, Max Meldrum, Frank Thring, Tommy Hanlon Jr., Clarissa Kaye, Judith McGrath

COUNTRY: Australia – Great Britain

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Norman Lindsay

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Humourbooks

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1968

COUNTRY: Australia (printed in Hong Kong)

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1938

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Drama – Comedy

WORDS: I haven’t read the book, or I think I may have read it a long time ago.

Australian Norman Lindsay was a painter who dabbled in literature, or perhaps he was a writer who dabbled in painting. His visual art is more remembered today that his literature. He belonged to that small and select group of upper middle class Bohemians in Australia which existed between the the early 1900s and the 1960s. Like many pre war Bohemians they looked back rather than forward, and to a place not remotely in their past … the European continent pre 1900. At the time Australia was largely an Anglo-Celtic nation with a smattering of minorities, and the minorities were definitely in the minority. With little “foreign” migration and no media (social or otherwise) Australian exposure to influence outside Great Britain and Ireland was limited. It is, perhaps, their pursuit of otherness or their desire to be different that attracted the Bohemians to the continent. This love of the continent, the old, the renaissance and its nudes, the Romans and their excesses that resulted in in a Lindsay and manifested itself in his art and writing which, not surprisingly, was “shocking” at the time.

The Wikipedia entry on him begins: “Norman Alfred William Lindsay (22 February 1879 – 21 November 1969) was an Australian artist, etcher, sculptor, writer, art critic, novelist, cartoonist and amateur boxer. One of the most prolific and popular Australian artists of his generation, Lindsay attracted both acclaim and controversy for his works, many of which infused the Australian landscape with erotic pagan elements and were deemed by his critics to be “anti-Christian, anti-social and degenerate”. A vocal nationalist, he became a regular artist for The Bulletin at the height of its cultural influence, and advanced staunchly anti-modernist views as a leading writer on Australian art.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lindsay

And that says it all … a man of talent and ambition not concerned with mainstream views.

I have a vague recollection of reading this book in High School though it is very vague. Maybe I skimmed it looking for salacious passages. I have an even vaguer recollection that his writing writing seems to be akin to a more cheery and happily ribald D.H. Lawrence. Lindsay’s Australian remoteness with it’s convict descendants, lower classes, and fortune hunters probably made him happier and looser than Lawrence in his the class structured English society. Though that is just an assumption. I’m sure there are Norman Lindsay experts out there who have read all his works. I defer to any of them.

Lindsay’s twin careers as novelist and painter / illustrator puts him in a good position to write this semi autobiographical (?) novel. Here is a novel about a struggling artist written about a struggling artist, and it is novel (sic) because the writer isn’t, as in most such novels, writing about his struggle as a writer but about his struggle as a painter.

Being a Queenslander the film has appeal for me, having been filmed in Brisbane and in North Queensland. But, the reason (as an adult) to watch it is for James Mason. Mason is, perhaps, one of the greatest of all English actors (well, I love him) and he nails it as the middle aged painter about to embark on a middle age crisis of sorts. He seems like he could have been a Bohemian painter, obsessed by his art rather than the subject … a million miles away from his other obsessed “older man” in Lolita (1962).

Of course the reason I watched the film as a teen many moons ago (and the reason people, apart from Michael Powell auteurists, watch it today) was because of the nudity. Everyone at the Catholic High Boys High School I was at knew there was full body (though no full frontal) nudity in the film. Maybe that’s why the book was well read as well though Lindsay’s self illustrated line drawings with it’s voluptuous curvy object of obsession in the novel didn’t imprint on the mind like the glorious colour streamlined tanned female of the film.

The nudity was supplied by 22 year old Helen Mirren (who made a career of on screen nudity for a while) but I didn’t know who she was at the time and, of course, no one knew who she was at the time of the film as it was one of her first film roles. She plays the Lindsay-ian nymph perfectly. She seems perfectly free and at ease with herself. It’s easy to assume that the world is a better place with a Helen Mirren in it. Special mention to Frank Thring as an art dealer in a bit (another Australian out of touch with the then Australia).

The book and the film seem to skate close to the line as you would expect, being a story about a job that turns into a “love” between an older man (40) and a much younger (18) woman ( errr ….. look at the title of the book and the film). The artist enamoured by the girls beauty but not sexually interested in her (initially) persuades her to pose nude. But she, Cora, is a child of nature, carer since age eight of her demented alcoholic grandmother, her mother long gone to the bright lights of Sydney. She is an innocent, not stupid, though not educated. She is struggling to escape her poverty and circumstance but she is very much the director of the action. Hmmmm. Despite our much espoused progressive promiscuity I’m not sure the book would be written or the film made today, or if they were, they would have a different outlook.

The film has been updated from the 1938 when the book was written to contemporary times (1960s) and it works. The middle age fantasy of of escaping to a remote sunlit part of the world, with uninhibited young people seemed also to tap into the late 1960s zeitgeist. The painters scandalous-ness would more likely survive in the 60s rather than in the 30s. Though, painters always seemed to get away with a bit more when dealing with all things sexual. It was the only occupation (until photography came along which was “spoilt” by pornographers) where you could have nude people standing in front of you for hours on end and you weren’t excluded from polite society. Maybe I should take up painting. Blogging has no nudity (well, apart from “couldn’t be bothered with clothes” attitude on the part of the blogger) and very little respect.

The late 60s saw a lot of mid-life crisis films. And they were fresh. The 30s had the depression and gangsters and the 40s had the war, so there was no time for personal crisis. The (more affluent) 50s had mid-life crisis appearing though it took the shape of men (inevitably) kicking against the norms of society but remaining within it (The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (1956), Some Came Running (1958) – both books and films). By the time the (still affluent) 60s rolled around these (inevitably, again) middle aged men were now escaping from society and its conventions by either running off to something remote, or finding someone a lot younger to hang out with, or (as in here) both. They weren’t confronting society so much as retreating from it. Mason’s painter is cousin to Kirk Douglas’ wealthy ad man Eddie Anderson in the (great) The Arrangement (1969), Tony Curtis’ man goes to California Carlo Cofield in (the magnificent) Don’t Make Waves (1967), Peter Sellers attorney Arnold Fine in (the hilarious) I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968), or William Holden’s real estate man Frank Harmon in (the underrated) Breezy (1973). The trend of middle age men going troppo in beautiful locations would continue, though without the philosophy, in 10 (1979), and Blame It on Rio (1984).

The book sticks to the plot closely except the artist in the film is portrayed as a very successful painter who exhibits his abstract, modernist paintings in New York (which is very 1960s). The painter in the book is a Bohemian and poor painter struggling to make a living (which is very 1930s). Also, the location was changed from New South Wales south coast to the Barrier Reef (Dunk Island) in North Queensland. Interestingly Norman Lindsay hated modernism. It’s not know what he made of the film as he died in 1969, the year the film was released.

The film was a huge success in Australia as were most films made in Australia at the time … as there were so few made.

TRIVIA: James Mason met his 22 year younger future wife, Clarissa Kaye, on this film. She played the part of Meg, Bradley’s ex-girlfriend in Australia. They remained together until his death in 1984.

This was the first film husband and wife Ron and Valerie Taylor worked on. They did the underwater moving picture photography and became minor celebrities as shark experts and underwater photographers after working on films like Jaws (1975) and Orca (1977).

The novel was first published in 1938 (in New York), It was first published in Australia in 1962.

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