The Romantic Age

This movie is billed as a comedy but there are precious few laughs to be had in it. A precocious and spoilt French brat (Mai Zetterling) seduces a rather stupid male teacher (a dull Hugh Williams) for a lark. The teacher is saved by his devoted daughter (a winsome young Petula Clark) but you really want to kick her father downstairs for being such an ass. Zetterling's accent is quite awful and she really is, as scripted, most tiresome, so it would have come as a moment of great satisfaction at the end to audiences of the day when the butler - fed up with her persistent brattiness - takes her over his knee and spanks her pert bottom very soundly with a hairbrush. So after about three other people during the course of the movie (no doubt to the agreement of the contemporary audience) telling her she needs a good spanking, she finally gets what she deserves as the camera fades out.. A happy finale in 1949. Today it wouldn't doubt have resulted in censorship and a prolonged court case.

A fascinating and very vintage story about a teacher seduced by a devious student as an act of revenge. It's hard to know if this film is supposed to be a comedy (I found myself mainly laughing in agony over Mai Zetterling's French accent) or a more serious drama. The scene near the end in the cab is incredibly poignant, when Petula Clark attempts to save her father's feelings by lying to him.

Hugh Williams was a romantic hero in his earlier career, but by 1949 he is pretty far from being love's young dream. Combined with Mai Zetterling's atrocious accent and the fact we know she is taking him for a ride, there's no real romance to be found here.

Some interesting parallels may be found with Girls' Dormitory (1936) where schoolmaster Herbert Marshall is seduced by French schoolgirl Simone Simon. Marshall is at least single in that one, and Simon's accent is happily authentic. Both films feature a scene in a hut in the middle of a storm, where Hugh/Herbert "rescues" Mai/Marie. There is surely a deliberate parallel or influence there.

As others have mentioned, the spanking scene at the end is frankly outrageous (though amusing for being so) and it's amazing it got past the censors. The silhouetting reminded me of the scene in Seinfeld episode "The Contest" where George visits his mother in hospital. It's very reminiscent of a Carry On film as well.

Unlike many reviewers have claimed: it isn't the case that this student-teacher relationship would be "illegal" in the UK these days. Mai's character is 18 and therefore legally able to consent - the "position of trust" legislation enacted in 2001 does not apply to legal adults. Hugh would doubtless be sacked, but he wouldn't face criminal charges. Unethical, and unwise, but not illegal.

When Hugh Williams becomes the poetry and arts master at an exclusive girl's school, he brings along his wife, Margot Grahame, and his daughter, Petula Clarke. Top of the heap is Mai Zetterling, a student, who is resentful of Williams at first so, being French(!), she decides to seduce him.

For a 1949 British movie, this is very mature and telling, with a fine performance by Miss Grahame. Nonetheless, the thought struck me, about halfway through, that it was all too conventional, that all the issues were just the sort that one would expect, and I began to wonder what would happen were the girl's school's St. Trinian's or had the movie been directed by Henri-George Clouzot. Did Ronald Searle see this movie and add it to the seething mass of cartoons that inspired the movies? Did Clouzot look at it and snarl "Au diable avec les edutiantes!" and start working on LES DIABOLIQUES? I'm not sure how useful comments like these are for appraising a perfectly decent and watchable British movie that has little to do with either of those works. It's simply that, somehow, I think they are.

In common with some French directors (cf. Duvivier's "Anna Karenina") Gréville made several films in England after the war. This film is a light-footed, fluffy type of comedy set in a girls' school in England with a plot based on the arrival of the first male teacher in this school and the flirtatious attempts mainly of Arlette, a French girl, played by Zetterling. She was a minor Swedish actress who worked mainly in the UK and Hollywood and ended up as a director, also of minor films. She is terribly miscast in this role, being way too old. She plays so over the top that you laugh every time she is on screen, which is clearly not what the director intended. The so-called French accent which she puts on when speaking English is very badly executed — anybody who has heard Greta Garbo or Ingrid Bergman would recognize Zetterling's voice in this film as being tinged definitely not with a French but a Swedish accent. Sometimes you wonder whether Zetterling found inspiration in Marlene Dietrich's night-club singer in "Der blaue Engel", which is patently ludicrous considering that her role is supposed to be that of a schoolgirl in England. The other members of the cast are quite good apart from the American girl in the school (too old and using inexplicable nautical jargon all the time). Hugh Williams as the teacher is a reliable performer and his daughter (also a pupil at the school), played by Petula Clark, comes across very convincingly as a teenage girl. Those interested in early post-war British cinema might enjoy spending one and a half hour with this lightweight but well-crafted film. At least — unintentionally on the part of the makers of the film — they would be assured of some laughs thanks to Zetterling's exaggerated performance

I recently had the pleasure of viewing The Romantic Age again after about 25 years from an underground video. It used to occasionally play on the local LA late show back then, along with other such nostalgic films as Miranda, Cynara, No Minor Vices, The Lady Says No, etc. I found that I could remember much of the dialog which brought back a flood of youthful memories. A classic scene is when Hugh Williams' daughter, Petula Clark, starts dancing and drinking wildly in a British nightclub as her shocked father enters to pull her out of there. Over the sound of the jazz, a disreputable-looking fat lady starts laughing at this, and you can still hear her piercing laugh as Williams yanks Petula out into the streets. I can still hear that laugh 25 years after seeing the movie! The irony of this is that Williams has been having an affair with one of his students, namely Arlette Tessereau, a French flirt played by a young Mai Zetterling. This film may be fluff, but it ranks high with me probably due to its nostalgia power. It should be released on video as well as Miranda and other obscure British comedies which are my favorites. But where are these films now? Who owns them? And will they ever be shown or released again?