Art for art’s sake… The Age of Consent (1969), BFI, Cinema Unbound, Film on Film

“… 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.” Michael Powell

This was Michael Powell’s last feature film and his best film since Peeping Tom for me although not without its issues. Co-produced with the film’s star, James Mason the film is also notable for being Helen Mirren’s first and after all that goes before its politeness or mischief that notes her membership of the Royal Shakespeare Company during the end credits. At least, that’s a view a more cynical viewer might make of a film in which the actress is described by one character as being “all t***s and legs…” and we do indeed see a lot of Helen in this film but, following the lead character’s aesthetic indifference and the good intentions of Michael Powell, this has to be seen as necessary.

Mason’s character, Bradley Morahan, is in search of his artistic truth and has boxed himself into a lucrative corner as he watches his abstract works fetching a pretty price in a New York gallery, attracting buyers with the shallowest of motives all of whom are painted just a little too large. The gallery manager is over-pricing his paintings and it’s working but all Brad wants is to rediscover the authentic commitment to producing honest work. There’s only one thing for it, and he decides to return to Queensland from whence he came, not that his accent is giving that away, and rent a shack on an island on the Barrier Reef.

Harold Hopkins, Lonsdale and James Mason

The story is based on a 1938 novel by Norman Lindsay which was initially briefly banned in Australia (until 1939) and which featured the artistic relationship between a 40-year-old painter Bradley Mudgett and a 17-year-old “child of nature”, Cora Ryan. Lindsay was the subject of the film Sirens (1994) which made much of his free-thinking, bohemian lifestyle and attitude to nudity. That film is a less honourable take on the issue than Powell’s as any relationship between the people played by 60-year-old Mason and Mirren, 22 when filming began in March 1968, is purely artistic for almost the entire film and he’s not liberated by Cora’s physique or youth but by her potency as a subject for art.

It's very interesting to hear Helen Mirren talk about the film as one of the extras on the excellent Indicator Blu-ray set which has both the Director’s Cut, 107 minutes with more Mirren and the original score by Peter Sculthorpe, a leading Australian classical composer, and the 100 minute UK cut for which the studio pulled in Stanley Myers for the score – I prefer the former, which achieves more of a balance between the film’s tonality. Mirren enjoyed the experience, her first major role in a feature film*, and that’s important given that her nudity in the film could have been seen as exploitative. She was 24 and with significant theatrical experience not least with the RSC, and says she was well treated by Powell, noting that this was not always the case with others.

Helen Mirren, RSC on tour

She says that the film could have taken an altogether darker route in terms of Cora’s relationship with the much older man but, as Martin Scorsese says in an interview on the set, confirming Powell’s views at the top, the film is all about the creation of art and the relationship between Cora is more about that than anything else. Scorsese points to this being a common theme running through much of the other director’s work from The Red Shoes through to Peeping Tom and even Honeymoon (1959). Brad’s eye is caught by the lines of Cora’s body, her energies and connection to the gorgeous landscape and it’s only in the very final minute that there is a physical interaction and one initiated by Cora.

Powell used some talented artists to give Brad’s work in progress the richness required and his artistic instincts are clearly shown to be returning the more time he spends in his hut. John Coburn is used for the lucrative e abstract works seen in the opening New York Gallery sale at the film’s start while paintings and sketches by Paul Delprat were used on the island scenes. This location was Dunk Island** off the Great Barrier Reef in northern Queensland a spectacular and raw part of this vast country.

Brad is disgusted with the whole process of the New York gallery sale and decides to fly back to his home country and find a wilderness in Queensland where he grew up. In Brisbane (?) he connects with an ex-girlfriend (Clarissa Kaye***) and the two are seen in bed in ways that will prove that in terms of Cora, his aim is artistic. This is a sexually active man but, not only does his art come first he is more of a “dromedary” in terms of his sexuality than his “pal” Nat Kelly (Jack MacGowran) who, frankly, needs to be on medication.

Nat’s slapstick laddishness is where the film veers a little off course along with the comedic characterisations of Cora’s dipsomaniacal and dominating grandma (Neva Carr Glyn) and local man-eater Isabel Marley (Andonia Katsaros). MacGowran (born and raised in Dublin) plays Kelly as an unlikable rogue and, as with Mason, his accent is a broad brush; he steals from his painter pal and is constantly on the make. If nothing else though the interactions with there three serve to highlight the innocence of the connection between painter and muse.

 

One performer without artifice is Brad’s dog, Godfrey as played by noted Australian terrier, Lonsdale. As with the other characters Godfrey lightens the tone in ways that allow us to appreciate the journey as the serious business of art, honesty and genuine connections evolves.

 

It’s ultimately a happy ending for Powell who sneaks enough meaning in there to remind us all what he was capable of. He may have found it harder to make films for the last quarter of his life but as Marty says, he never stopped making plans some of which involved him as well as his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, eventually to become the third Mrs Powell.

We watched a 35mm print of the 2005 restoration and it looked glorious, wonderful colours and a tangible warmth that digital doesn't always convey in quite the same way. Such a treat to experience so many of Powell's films on celluloid. Thanks again to the BFI for this Season of Seasons!

 

 

*Helen Mirren also had a brief appearance in Don Levy’s harrowing Herostratus (1967) and played Titania in Peter Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968).

 

** I’m not sure it there’s a connection but in 1974 a small community of artists was established on Dunk Island by former Olympic wrestler turned tapestry maker, Bruce Arthur allowing a small group of creators to live and showcase their work to many visitors. It’s still there now, just about.

 

*** James Mason began corresponding with Kaye after the filming, and they were married in 1971, remaining so until Mason's death in 1984. He found a muse as well as Brad.

The large back room… Stranger in the House (1967), BFI Flipside, Dual Format

Made around about the same time as The London Nobody Knows, a quirky documentary narrated by James Mason and exploring the capital’s oddest outposts, Stranger in the House features the Winchester and, indeed, Southampton that nobody knew… This is one of those oddly-balanced films that must have been so “even” at the time with one of our biggest movie stars playing Old Guard to a gaggle of RADA graduates who, it has to be said, do “wacky things”.

Led by Geraldine Chaplin and a baby-faced Ian Ogilvy, this funky group hang out in discotheques, smoke weed, stand up frequently in fast cars and boats and trespass on cargo ships. It’s all a far cry from the disciplined up-bringing of Angela Sawyer (Chaplin), whose father’s only vice is a 15-year long addiction to alcohol and isolating himself from fatherly affection since his wife ran off with another man… one who was far less serious about a legal career.

Geraldine Chaplin and Paul Bertoya,

John Sawyer (James Mason) is a man who is drunk “today, yesterday and tomorrow”, someone who cannot see a way forward beyond his past and whose magnificent Georgian house in Winchester is crumbling around in sympathy with his lost ambition, self-loathing and unkindness. In comparison, daughter Angela’s rooms are ablaze with pop-art colour, Peter Blake to her Dad’s Francis Bacon, with appropriated signs of youthful revolt; a traffic sign, advertising hoardings and so, much, pink!

John is beyond bitter and is simply disinterested yet Mason carries all of this off and still makes us care, injecting his character’s path to redemption with enough stubbornness that it is entirely believable. This is not an easy man and his investigations are as much into his own conscience as the causes of a murder, an approach very much in the style of the story’s original writer Georges Simenon, creator of Maigret and writer of over 500 (yes) reasonably-concise novels. Simenon liked to focus on his main characters and their mental processes faced with the horrifically-criminal and here Mason’s barrister reveals a surprising humanity when he eventually nails the killer; a moment when our sympathies are not as cut and dried as they might be.

James Mason aginises about lost love.

Directed and written by Pierre Rouve, who worked mostly as a producer as on Blow Up and others, the film is uneven, Mason aside, but whether by design or timidity, Rouve let his star make the running. The other players are more problematic chiefly because, Blow Up and some others aside, it’s quite difficult to capture The Spirit of ’67 without highlighting how British hippies were more formerly whimsical than say those in West-Coast America where, after all, they had a war to protest.

Sarah and her chums are not helped by being a bit posh… they’re all from nice homes and drive around in sports cars with matching fab gear in Winchester – hardly Haight Asbury – going down to Southampton to smoke joints in darkened clubs to the sounds of The Animals. No sign of Fonda or Hopper here although there’s a guy wearing an “I Hate You All” t-shirt who sells the drugs which are consumed by Angela and her working-class Greek boyfriend Jo Christoforides (Paul Bertoya), Peter Hawkins (Bryan Stanyon) and Sue Phillips (Pippa Steel) but not Desmond Flower (Ogilvy) who turns out to be rather more uptight than the rest.

What d'you mean I look like my dad?!

Peter is the son and heir of Harry Hawkins (the magnificent James Hayter) and his retail business whilst Desmond is the son of Colonel Flower (Clive Morton) and his wife (Moira Lister) who just happens to be John Sawyer’s sister.

One day the famous five are playing in Southampton harbour and they sneak onto a cargo ship where they find an American Barney Teale (Bobby Darin, literally, somewhere, beyond the sea…) who is anxious to take his leave and doesn’t mind blackmailing these rich saps into providing him accommodation at an abandoned Theatre owned by Peter’s dad. Darin provides great energy with an acting style out of step with the Brits – more method and manically-mannered but reasonably effective in a “am I watching the same film?!” kind of way. The film was an MGM production and this injection of American style creates an uneasy tension with the more cerebral intensity of Mason – A Small Back Room meets Rebel Without a Cause?

Kids yesterday... 

Any road up, Barney has soon wheedled his way into staying in the loft of the Sawyer’s cavernous Georgian pile and the tension mounts leading to murder. Who dunnit and will John Sawyer be able to sober enough in time to save himself and his daughter’s relationship, not to mention her lover’s life? Apart from anything else, Jo Christoforides is a foreigner and the subject of the same unreasoned prejudice as you find in every civilized country from time to time. His mother is played by the great Megs Jenkins, who epitomised nuanced maternity for decades. She’s joined by Ivor Dean who is employed with equal surprise as the world-weary Inspector Colder – he might just have well walked straight off the set for The Saint and his role of Inspector Teal.

There’s also a tough-but-sweet-hearted cameo from “Aunty” Yootha Joyce in the fairground shooting rang where the boys steal a gun which is eventually used as the murder weapon…

Bobby Darin gives it some "more"

In the end we care less about who committed the crime than the healing powers of investigation which put familial squabbles in sharp relief; which may well be part of the appeal of this genre in the first place.

Stranger in the House is the 37th release in the BFI Flipside strand, comes in dual format - Blu-ray and DVD along with a stack of archival extras include photographer David Bailey’s 1966 film G.G. Passion (with Chrissie Shrimpton and Caroline Munro…), a psychedelic 1968 advert for coffee, an interview with James Mason, a new commentary and an illustrated booklet. There’s also a couple of odd shorts: Tram Journey Through Southampton (c1900) and Charlie Chaplin Sails From Southampton (1921), of interest to his daughter and us silent film fans.

Bored teenagers

Further details are on the BFI shop site – I personally like so many of the series, being, in most cases, far too young to have seen them in the first place and, in general, they always convey so much of the talent as well as the themes and sense of place long gone; in this case, the Winchester no body knows...

On the way to the Winchester nobody knows...

Winchester fashions

Guilty feet... Mr Mason's shoes pick up the scenery paint

"Excuse me, but do you have a copy of the Law Society Gazette?"

Moira Lister lounges as Ian Ogilvy loiters

(Here it comes...) ...somewhere, across the sea...

The retail empire strikes back

Aunty Yootha

"No, I ain't seen a copy of the Gazette either..."

Odd man out.

The moving finger writes… Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)

A wispy dream of a film, Albert Lewin’s labour about love has a cracking start full of intrigue, invention and fragile mortality.

It begins with a portentous quote from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: "The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

The villagers crowd to view the tragedy

A Spanish fishing boat has uncovered something terrible and we see the villagers of Esperanza  running across the beach from all directions as the camera pans outwards through a tolling bell on a high tower and revealing a young woman looking down in horror through a telescope on a platform way above the shore. It’s a great set-piece and seems to have been improvised largely around the location as found.

Amidst the distress that follows we learn that one of the two dead was known and loved very well by the local expats - a mix of archaeologists, drunks and speed racers – and is an American singer called Pandora…

There goes the fourth wall...

The owner of the house on the hill is Professor Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender) and, as he mulls over the tragedy, he turns startlingly to face the viewer and starts telling the whole tale... The distant sound of gypsy music increases in volume and is revealed as the Professor's memory of a local group performing before the expats. The gypsies are everything the Brits are not, passionate and  true to themselves, they play and dance with abandon... a foretaste of what is to come.

Now that's a pasodoble!

Pulling back from the gypsy dancing, we soon see Pandora languidly dazzling all around her one of whom (Marius Goring) is drinking himself to death over her. After asking her one more time if she will marry him he drinks the poison he has popped in his wine glass and drops dead in front of her.

Almost unmoved by this inevitable waste of a miss-guided life, Pandora simply walks off.

Ava Gardner

The next day at the Professor's home, Pandora ignores the facile grieving and sets her sights on Stephen Cameron (Nigel Patrick) a British land speed record driver who may have been dating the Professor’s niece Janet (Liverpool’s own Sheila Sim). Yet even the professor admires her directness and her honesty… perhaps the younger men are too distracted by her beauty: too sexually acquisitive?

She drives off with Nigel in his racing car – his pride and joy – and, stunningly, asks him if he would push it over the cliff in order to prove his love to her. This is duly does and there’s some marvellous shots of Pandora throwing her head back in ecstasy as the machine falls to the sea behind her.

Pandora is impressed by sacrifice

This is then followed by a strangely impressive shot of Pandora’s profile – huge in the foreground – whilst Nigel stands small, trying to make sense of what he has just done.

Man Ray is rumoured to have worked on the film and such moments might reflect such input but, then again, the cinematography is from Jack Cardiff fresh from his triumphs on The Red Shoes. This is a sumptuous-looking film and – allowing for some deterioration even on the restored Blu-Ray – must have looked stunning on the big screen.

Pandora swims out

Mere moments after having agreed to marry Nigel, Pandora becomes fascinated by the boat in the bay and swims out to investigate… she arrives to find an almost empty ship with a single occupant, painting a portrait of a woman who looks uncannily like herself.

Pandora is shocked when she meets this strange man – a look of recognition or of love? She tries to regain her stride but she has been shaken to the core.

At first sight...

The man is revealed to be Hendrick van der Zee (James Mason) a Dutch sailor who hides a rather substantial secret…

It’s from this point that the film begins to lose some of that early energy as the viewer calculates the ways in which things will play out. Yet the chemistry between the simply gorgeous Gardner and the manly Mason is good and both act exceptionally well – blasting pretty much everyone else off-screen (such a shame Goring got “injured” so early on…)

The genuinely great, James Mason

Gradually the mystery is revealed as Hendrick becomes involved in local society. He translates a sixteenth century journal for Fielding who begins to realise that his translator is also, incredibly the author… Can it be that this is the same man?

I won’t give much away as this story relies so much on mystery and anticipation to work.

Bull fighting and car racing... the men compete

But there’s a long way to run as a famous bullfighter Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabré), returns to his home town and sets himself on winning back Pandora. There’s a dangerous sporting stand-off between him and Nigel who breaks the land speed record in a sequence filmed in Pendine, South Wales (I’d recognise that long, flat beach anywhere!). Juan responds by fighting bulls and getting cross.

But who will Pandora chose…

The film is a stylistic delight and strangely charming… OK the story may be fantastic but then isn’t that what we want? It’s a more spiritually straightforward counter-point to A Matter of Life and Death at a time when audiences still needed to believe that there’s more to life than death… and we haven’t changed that much.

Ava Gardner

I hadn't really watched Gardner properly before and she is indeed very beautiful... perfectly cast as a Pandora every bit as mythical as the Dutchman: the two eternally destined to be together or not at all.

Watch it and be entranced by Gardner and Mason and to marvel at a fantasy that is ultimately disarmingly frank. As Professor Fielding says: "the measure of love is how much you are willing to sacrifice for it" and there's simply no easy answer to that.

It’s available here in a fine new Blu-Ray/DVD combo.

John Laurie's in it too!

Pendine Beach in South Wales, home of the World land speed record once upon a time.