Published 2016 on Down Under Flix
Director: Michael Powell
Director: Michael Powell
Stars: James Mason, Helen Mirren, Jack MacGowran, Lonsdale
In
the 1940s, British director Michael Powell, in collaboration with Emeric
Pressburger, made The Red
Shoes, Black
Narcissus, A
Matter of Life and Death, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, among others.
All four are jewels in the crown of British cinema: look at any list of the
greatest British films ever made and you’ll find them featured prominently. By
way of example, see this list from Time Out and this one by the British Film Institute (this list also features Carry On… Up the Khyber ranked
directly above The Killing
Fields, making it mandatory reading). While Powell’s 1960
film Peeping Tom also
features on these lists and is today held in esteem, this voyeuristic
psychological thriller was reviled by critics and cultural commentators on
release and the filmmaker was ostracized wholesale from the industry. Later that
decade he made two flicks in Australia: the 1966 comedy They’re a Weird Mob and
1969’s Age of Consent.
Based
on a work of autobiographical fiction by Norman Lindsay, the subject of last week's film Sirens, Age
of Consent stars James Mason as the Lindsay-esque artist
Bradley Morahan. Frustrated by the commerce and crassness of the London art
world and the corresponding erosion of his own output, ex pat Morahan
retreats back to Australia. At his holiday house in North Queensland, he
encounters Cora (Helen Mirren), an unsophisticated but radiant beauty who
becomes his muse. However, interference comes in the form of Cora’s mentally
ill mother and Morahan’s opportunist “friend” Nat (Jack MacGowran).
Age
of Consent won
me over at the outset with this colourful title card …
…and
then sealed the deal several cards later with this very important credit for
Mason and Mirren’s furry co-star:
Suffice
to say, whilst the combination of Michael Powell, James Mason and Helen Mirren
had me thinking Age of
Consent would be a stately, ornate affair, the finished film
is much more earthy, vibrant and fun. In retrospect I should have known better,
given Lindsay’s presence as both subject matter and source novelist and
Powell’s lively handling of They’re
a Weird Mob a few years earlier. Indeed, while Powell’s local
films along with Wake in
Fright and Walkabout – two
other films made in and about Australia by outsiders – helped
plant the seeds for the New Wave of the 70s, I get the feeling Powell was a lot
more affectionate towards his base of operations than Ted Kotcheff and Nicolas
Roeg. Moreover, I’m sure that in the aftermath of Peeping Tom, Powell empathized
with Lindsay’s own real-life brushes with controversy.
It’s
not always sound criticism comparing two films with the same subject matter
made in different eras by different directors, but it is interesting to
compare Age of Consent and Sirens. At the most immediate
surface level, the films’ different settings (Age of Consent appears to be set
contemporaneous with its production, whilst Sirens is a period film) and locations
(Powell’s film was made at Dunk Isle in the Great Barrier Reef, whilst Duigan’s
was set in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains and surrounds) give them a different
flavour. In particular, Sirens is
a pretty film, but Age of
Consent is GORGEOUS, harnessing Powell’s knack for rich, eye
popping colour as well as underwater photography from the winning team of
Ron and Valerie Taylor (later of Jaws fame). In
a way, Powell and co capture the intoxicating effect of a tropical
environment on an artist much more successfully than Mario Andreacchio
in Paradise Found.
At
their core, these two Lindsay-themed films have different priorities. Sirens wears its discourse
and didacticism on its sleeve, constantly making its subtext text, with Lindsay
a catalyst but ultimately of secondary importance narrative-wise to the
visiting Campions and titular Sirens. Age of Consent, meanwhile, is more a portrait of
the artist rediscovering his creativity and passion via his muse. Where Sirens romanticizes the
ideas behind the art, Age of
Consent romanticizes the artistic process itself. Again, it’s
hard not to shake parallels between Morahan and Powell himself, likewise a
creator retreating from Britain to rekindle his fires down under.
James
Mason’s mellifluous, velvety, aristocratic tones are among the most
recognisable in Western film, so there’s a momentary shock to hearing him
submerge that voice under a muscular ex pat Australian accent. The same goes
for Helen Mirren, making her screen debut, who serves here as “an early entrant
in an Australian cinematic tradition of presenting characters whose appearances
are radiant but who sound as cultivated as tin can” (see also Susie Porter
in Welcome to Woop Woop)
as noted by Luke Buckmaster in The Guardian.
But that surprise soon subsides, and both actors are excellent. Also
deserving of praise: Lonsdale, the canine performer portraying Morahan’s dog
Godfrey. Jack MacGowran (whose final film would be The Exorcist a few years
later) is a bit much at times as Morahan’s grating old chum, but that’s
entirely appropriate to the story.
Mason’s
work here comes a few years after his lead role in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, also about an older man
falling for an underage girl. But Morahan and Humbert Humbert are cut from
very different cloths, and Powell deflects attention away from the
romantic/sexual dimension of the artist/muse relationship – it’s all about the
art, see – until film’s end. Moreover, the film stresses that Cora is
nearly of age, and the fact that Mirren was 22 years of age at the time and
looks her 22 years certainly helps to minimize any unsavoury connotations.
Nonetheless, Cora is frequently nude onscreen and, much like Linday’s own
artwork, this got some censors riled up: the film was cut from 106 to 98
minutes for theatrical release, though this cut footage has been restored
for DVD.
Michael Powell is indisputably one of the greats, with admirers as
distinguished as Martin Scorsese and George Romero,
and Australia was fortunate to provide safe harbour for the then-persona non
grata director. While Age of
Consent isn’t one of his masterworks, it’s a highly watchable
film from a masterful filmmaker featuring work from two masterful performers.
Ben Kooyman