A Shack Slap Spang On the Sea
Age of Consent (1969)
directed by Michael Powell
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
There's something very British going on here, between the buddy who likes the horses and the old crone with her gin, but, closing credits song notwithstanding, there's nothing at all unhealthy about Michael Powell's investment in the natural world. From the vantage of a Pennsylvania summer, humid and still, James Mason's holiday on the Great Barrier Reef looks like paradise. The "famously nude" Helen Mirren - a Frank Frazetta princess of Atlantis - is a part of that, and there's a joke somewhere about underwater photographer Ron Taylor no doubt preferring Queensland and Helen to Massachusetts and Bruce.
But Powell, far from leering at the figure of a twenty-three year-old woman, lets her be a part of the life around her. Mason paints and goes to the mainland, or plays fetch with his dog. He meets his neighbors, few as they are, and each of them is a testament to the small ways and suspicions of people in isolated places. In that sense, Age of Consent is as far from The Edge of the World as a movie about community can get, unless Mason and Mirren are a Shetland island of their own. Then it becomes an Eden again: fishing for prawns by torchlight, sun on top of sun-bleached hair, a fishing shack painted all the colors of the ocean.
Scorsese's affections for this outlier of the Powell/Pressburger glory days are notably vague in a short supplement, and the racetrack humor would be right at home on a BBC sitcom, but it isn't the narrow British picture it seems. For one thing, Powell is an expert at quick, clean cuts as a way to denote the passage of long periods of time. No static shots of tides followed by long fades - just a small place to stay, cleaned up a bit and covered wall to wall in bright blurs. "The Jet Set," the episode of Mad Men in which it's possible to feel the Palm Springs warmth on Don's skin through the television, gave me the same July feeling.
directed by Michael Powell
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
There's something very British going on here, between the buddy who likes the horses and the old crone with her gin, but, closing credits song notwithstanding, there's nothing at all unhealthy about Michael Powell's investment in the natural world. From the vantage of a Pennsylvania summer, humid and still, James Mason's holiday on the Great Barrier Reef looks like paradise. The "famously nude" Helen Mirren - a Frank Frazetta princess of Atlantis - is a part of that, and there's a joke somewhere about underwater photographer Ron Taylor no doubt preferring Queensland and Helen to Massachusetts and Bruce.
But Powell, far from leering at the figure of a twenty-three year-old woman, lets her be a part of the life around her. Mason paints and goes to the mainland, or plays fetch with his dog. He meets his neighbors, few as they are, and each of them is a testament to the small ways and suspicions of people in isolated places. In that sense, Age of Consent is as far from The Edge of the World as a movie about community can get, unless Mason and Mirren are a Shetland island of their own. Then it becomes an Eden again: fishing for prawns by torchlight, sun on top of sun-bleached hair, a fishing shack painted all the colors of the ocean.
Scorsese's affections for this outlier of the Powell/Pressburger glory days are notably vague in a short supplement, and the racetrack humor would be right at home on a BBC sitcom, but it isn't the narrow British picture it seems. For one thing, Powell is an expert at quick, clean cuts as a way to denote the passage of long periods of time. No static shots of tides followed by long fades - just a small place to stay, cleaned up a bit and covered wall to wall in bright blurs. "The Jet Set," the episode of Mad Men in which it's possible to feel the Palm Springs warmth on Don's skin through the television, gave me the same July feeling.
posted by NPK at 2:01 PM
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