Bradley Morahan (James Mason) is an Australian artist who feels he has become jaded by success and life in New York City.

There he meets young Cora Ryan (Helen Mirren), who has grown up wild, with her only relative, her difficult, gin-guzzling grandmother 'Ma' (Neva Carr Glyn).

Ma subsequently catches Cora posing nude for Bradley and accuses him of carrying on with her underage granddaughter.

A film version was announced in 1961 by producer Oscar Nichols, who said he wanted Dan O'Herlihy and Glynis Johns to star.

Several changes were made from Lindsay's novel, including shifting the location from New South Wales to the Barrier Reef and making the artist a success instead of a failure.

James Mason met his future wife Clarissa Kaye on this film; she played the part of Meg, Bradley's ex-girlfriend in Australia.

[7][12][13][14] Underwater moving picture photography was undertaken by Ron and Valerie Taylor as their first work for a feature film.

[citation needed] Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe's score was cut from the original release by Columbia executives who found it too unconventional.

Age of Consent was a huge success in Australia, where it received generally favourable reviews,[16] and drew sizeable audiences; it ran continuously for seven months at Sydney's Rapallo.

[18] Filmink argued "I'm not sure audiences came for Mason, fine an actor as he was – it was more the scenery, and the racy subject matter, and a dozen other stars could have played that part as effectively.

Penelope Mortimer in The Observer wrote "I tremendously admire James Mason and believed, until I saw Age of Consent, that he could do no wrong...It is best forgiven and forgotten".

[7] The reviewer in Variety wrote that the "film has plenty of corn, is sometimes too slow, repetitious and badly edited...Yet [it] has immense charm, and the photography and superb scenery make it a good travelog ad for the Great Barrier Reef".

[22] The restored version was released in the US on DVD in January 2009 as part of a double set of Powell films, paired with A Matter of Life and Death.

[24] Umbrella Entertainment released a DVD of the restored version in Australia in July 2012 with special features including Martin Scorsese on Age of Consent, audio commentary with historian Kent Jones, the making of Age of Consent, Helen Mirren: A Conversation with Cora, and Down Under with Ron and Valerie Taylor.