The Age of Consent

This little precode film deals with the unfortunate fact that hormonal activity peaks at the same time in life that critical decisions must be made. In this case we have a couple half-way through college - Betty and Mike - that are starting to suffer certain "urges". Mike wants to get married, but Betty thinks that if Mike drops out of college to marry her, he'll regret it someday and she wants them to wait. In the meantime, popular coed Duke Galloway sees an opportunity in this romantic intermission and starts to put the moves on Betty.

All of this angst leads Mike to drink heavily one night and fall for the charms of local waitress Dora Swale. Dora is OK with the fact that this is a one night stand, but just as Mike is getting ready to leave her house, Dora's dad appears, and he is not at all happy about the situation.

If this seems very frank and daring for 1932, it is. There are no big name stars in this film. The biggest name is John Halliday as Professor David Matthews who acts as a father figure to Mike, even though he is given to handing out confusing advice. He and Barbara act as an analog for the possible future Mike and Betty - they were in love and waited to finish their education. After graduation they found that there was nothing to pick up where they had left off, and are now heading into middle age alone. The best lines go to Arline Judge as Dora. She doesn't look like her, but Arline's voice, her movements, and definitely her attitude are precode Stanwyck.

I've already mentioned how things stay the same - the hormonal challenges of late adolescence/early adulthood. How things have changed is the lesson this film seems to teach - that college is optional and even a possible obstacle in seeking true happiness, and maybe it was in 1932 when people married earlier and needed less skill to make a living wage. Today, however, it is an essential rite of passage to a middle class lifestyle, and even then there are no guarantees.

Unlike a lot of early sound films, where the actors don't know quite what to do with their voices, so the dialog's either stilted or exaggerated (more like on stage), this one came across pretty good. There wasn't all that exaggeration or over-the-top melodrama, and I credit the actor for that.

The story's not bad either, as two young college students try to navigate a society that's quite a bit different than when their parents were their age. (This movie is from 1931, so Mom and Dad were probably college age in the 1900's, so that says a lot.) Betty's an old-fashioned girl who thinks she should be more modern, while Michael wants to hold onto traditional values and ideals, despite pressure and temptation.

When a modern mistake is made, an old-fashioned correction seems in order, which may ruin the couple's chance for happiness.

There is also educational/life choice issues: is it okay to leave college and get a job, start your adult life a bit sooner than planned, even if it means postponing or giving a degree and career goals, if you have what you believe is a valid reason for doing so?

This movie has a bittersweet ending, and I could have done without the bitter, as a character of questionable ethics shows himself to be a better person and deserved a better fate.

Worth watching.

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.

'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.

This is a better cultural artifact than a movie . . . but it's a very watchable movie. Catch it on TCM.

The alert is for Richard Cromwell, who plays the young man in what I'll call "a situation" with a townie waitress. He's a pretty good actor I've not seen in any other pictures -- and a 24-carat ringer for Leonardo DiCaprio! Their resemblance is beyond close; it's frightening: looks, body language, the whole package. (I am not a good judge of voices, but I don't think they're too far apart.) . . . Since IMDb is insisting on 10 lines' worth of comment even tho' I'm done, I agree w/ the other posted comments about the snappy yet smarmy pre-Code tone of this movie. That's what makes it such an artifact. If I were Robert Osborne (and we're all SO lucky I'm not), this movie would be double-billed with "The Story of Temple Drake," a bleaker look at the same good-time era starring Miriam Hopkins.