The Age of Consent

The Age Of Consent is a terribly dated before the Code film with a Victorian era plot and loaded with sexual innuendo. This would have made a great Cecil B. DeMille silent film.

The Age Of Consent began as a play called Cross Roads which had the misfortune of opening on Broadway within two weeks of the Stock Market crash. After that Broadway closed a lot of shows because folks couldn't afford the theater. Cross Roads only ran 28 performances and Franchot Tone and Sylvia Sidney were in the supporting roles that Eric Linden and Arline Judge play on the screen.

The leads are Richard Cromwell and Dorothy Wilson who are in love and going through a lot of angst. Dorothy's a good kid who doesn't want to give it up before she has a wedding ring on her finger. Richard's even ready to quit school. But when she says no he goes off with the local waitress at the college hangout Arline Judge.

Catching him alone with his daughter puritanical dad Richard Barlow says no one is going to disgrace my daughter, marry her or else because she's still a minor. Poor Cromwell sees his whole life slipping away, all the plans he had for his future, just gone up in smoke.

It all kind of works out for most of the cast. John Halliday is her as the wise science professor who acts as mentor and father figure to the college kids. Barlow's part is interesting his type is still around today, ignorant and proud of it. Look for a young Betty Grable as one of the coeds.

It's an interesting story and typical of the times. But thank God we seem to have moved away from the attitudes expressed by Barlow in The Age Of Consent.

Based upon a play, "The Age of Consent" is a film of ideas. Although it might first seem like just another flippantly written pre-code story about young love, the title is the first clue. The age of consent in a particular jurisdiction is the age at which one can legally consent to sexual acts. Knowing this, the viewer might consider it an allusion to the line between immaturity and maturity that the students of State University ride. They are not yet ready for the responsibilities of adult life, but the educational process asks them to consider the large issues of life.

A stone bench on campus is the second clue to the serious ideas this film explores. "In loco parentis" is a Latin phrase meaning "in the place of a parent" and it is a concept regarding the (if you will, fiduciary) legal role of a college, upon accepting a student in its care, to assume some responsibilities of a parent and, therefore, some legal liabilities. That phrase is carved into this bench, where we see Professor David Matthews (John Halliday) offer parental advice and comfort to student Mike Harvey (Richard Cromwell).

Both legal concepts figure heavily in the story. The campus is a seemingly idyllic setting where students can exist in an ivory tower, away from the harsh realities of the outside world, to explore controversial and abstract ideas, like free love. But innocence resides there with burgeoning passions and the difficulties they present.

The moral relativism that many feared would result from abstract ideas and newer scientific principles, e.g. Darwinism and a revised astronomical view of man's place in the universe, come head to head with the "older" moral certainties of absolutism and church dogma. Will love find a place in the crossfire?

This film features good, sparkling dialogue and some excellent acting. The ending may be a surprise for many viewers.

Even for pre-Hayes code cinema, this one is particularly smutty. Not to say there's nudity or whatever, but the sexuality positively drips off the screen, and very little is said which doesn't have to do with intercourse of one sort or another. They probably had fun making this one. Highly recommended if you can find it. Thanks to the American Film Institute for their preserving this film.

'What do I care about my Daughter's happiness…I'm only concerned about what's right and what's wrong."

This Movie is Another Side of the Pre-Code Expression that is Rarely Mentioned or Discussed because it isn't Lurid, Steamy, or Filled with Lingerie Shots. It is the Freedom (without restrictions from the thought policing of Hays, Breen and the League of Decency) for Films to be Informative, Thought Provoking, Educational, Stimulating, and Socially Redeeming.

It is a Snappy Movie Filled with Great Verbal Flourishes about "Free Love" (the Hippies didn't invent the term), Right and Wrong, Moral or Immoral, and Simply a Coming of Age Paradox of Hormones and Society's Restrictions and Legislation of Private and Personal Behavior. It Tries to Answer, or at Least Discuss, if Anyone has any Say on What Goes on in a Person's Bedroom.

It is Not the Movie that You Think it is Going In. It is a Thoughtful Exploration about a Controversial Subject and is Intelligent and Engaging. Well Acted by Mostly Young Unknowns but Without Much Style, the Film Figures its Straightforward Narrative and Filming Techniques were Better Suited for the Academic Like "Lectures" about a Universal and Timeless Truth.

Certainly Worth a Watch for Film Historians as Well as Culture War Combatants that will Discover Something to Think About. The Ending May be a bit Hokey and Dated but the Film's Basic Subject Matter is Definitely Not.

The title and synopsis suggest that this might be some silly pre-code fluffy nonsense but it's absolutely not! This is a mature and thought provoking drama with naturalistic acting, realistic dialogue giving a shocking insight into who we were in the 1930s.

Hopefully I'm not making it sound like some dry documentary - this is pure slap you in the face type melodrama but also a real education! It explains so much about the attitudes and ideas of the time. What makes it so compelling isn't just the themes it's the likeability and the surprising realism of the characters. Even Eric Linden who's often atrocious is great in this. Likewise, pretty Arline Judge who's pretty awful in other pictures in this, with a good director, is fantastic, channeling her 'inner-Barbara Stanwyck.'

University life in 1932...or really the late twenties when this was written, doesn't seem too different to how it was in my time in the 1980s. Although nobody's arguing about whether Pink Floyd or Yes are best or what to watch on the TV, they're still a) not discussing course work and b) obsessed with sex. It's all weirdly relatable.

The plot, which as I say, explains the attitudes of so many 1930s movies centres on a student who has sex with a waitress....they're caught by her dad who informs the student that she's under-age...so he has two choices according to the law: a) go to jail or b) marry his daughter. Before the eleventh century, if you had sex with someone you were legally married.... times hadn't changed too much had they but this is the 1930s not the Middle Ages! I was staggered that this was the pronouncement of a court.

'But we don't love each other.' they'd argue. 'What's love got to do with marriage?' they'd reply ad though answering the most absurd question ever, 'Marriage isn't about love, it's about doing the right thing.' I guess this explains why so many people in 1930s pictures get married so quickly without really getting to know each other. No sex before marriage wasn't just an idea, it was part of our make-up, one of our unbreakable, unquestionable Ten Commandments.

To a lesser degree, the other topic this pokes into is class. When I was in Oxford there was a distinct line between town and gown. It was either Dr Who or Star Trek where two separate communities existed on the same planet in the same space but were separated somehow so they never knew of each other's existence - Oxford was a bit like that in the eighties but in the late twenties of this film, that segregation was even wider. Only the super-rich could afford to go to university back then so what happened between this testosterone filled student and the randy teenage waitress is an exploration of what happens classes clash - could an entitled son of a millionaire live happily ever after with an 'uneducated' working class daughter of a labourer? Society says they must!

This belongs with those other early thirties pictures such as NIGHT COURT, BABY FACE, SHE HAD TO SAY YES, BAD GIRL etc. Which make you realise that you wouldn't really want to have lived back then.