Before filming began on "Age of Consent", director Michael Powell said about it:My next film is the story of a painter who believes that he will no longer paint and of a girl who persuades him to begin again...He will probably end up painting her; but to see a painter sit down and paint a girl, this could be exciting, but I had the hardest time explaining to my scriptwriter that this didn't excite me at all. What interested me was the problem of Creation and the fact that this creation in the case of the painter was very physical. He will have to struggle, to fight, even more strongly than he will move away from reality. It will be a slightly bitter comedy that I will produce with James Mason who will play the leading role. Powell and Mason had wanted to work together in the past, on "I Know Where I'm Going!", but had not been able to come to an agreement on billing, and Mason was unwilling to go on location to Scotland. After "Age of Consent" Powell tried to recruit Mason for his version of Shakespeare's "The Tempest", a project which never came to fruition.