Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey (1961) was part of a film movement that enlivened and emboldened British cinema as the fifties gave way to the sixties.

Historical Background: During most of the 1950's, British cinema was in a somewhat tired phase, repeating the same clichéd war vehicles, lightweight comedies, and gothic horror films over and over again. Something fresh was needed and it came in the form of the British New Wave, also known as "Kitchen Sink Cinema," "Angry Young Men Films" or "Social Problem Films." This movement was short-lived, lasting mostly from 1959-1963 (with just a couple of stragglers coming later), and featured grim, social realism, frank, course, working-class dialog, angry, alienated heroes, details of everyday living, and gritty, grainy cinematography. These films, though few in number, helped pave the way for further exportation of British cinema and culture to America, during the Sixties.

The film that launched the movement was Jack Clayton's Room at the Top (1959). The directors most closely associated with the movement were Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, and John Schlesinger. Tony Richardson's contributions to the movement included Look Back in Anger (1959), A Taste of Honey (1961), and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962). Lindsay Anderson's contributions were This Sporting Life (1963) and If… (1969). Karel Reisz's films of this ilk were Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966). John Schlesinger added A Kind of Loving (1962) and Billy Liar (1963) (see hankkimball's Review). Other films that were part of the movement included Clive Donner's The Caretaker (1963), Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), and Sidney Furie's The Leather Boys (1963). The directors involved in the movement came from backgrounds in theater, documentaries, and television, rather than mainly cinema. Although all of these films focused on working-class people, only two of the films dealt directly with class conflicts; namely, Room at the Top (1958) and Look Back in Anger (1959).

Tony Richardson was born Cecil Antonio Richardson in 1928 in Shipley, England. His secondary school was relocated into the countryside during World War II, causing him to proceed through most of his adolescent years without direct parental guidance. As a result, he developed (by his own assessment) a strong hatred of authority. At Oxford, he was head of the Drama Society and took up stage direction for a career after he graduated. He worked for BBC-TV and became associated with the so-called "Free Cinema Movement" launched in 1956. This documentary movement aimed at steering British cinema in the direction of contemporary and controversial subject matter more directly relevant to the everyday life of the working class. During this period, Richardson also contributed as a writer to Sight and Sound magazine. In 1956, Richardson directed a successful play for the English Stage Company, Look Back in Anger, that set the tone for what would become the British New Wave Cinema three years later. Richardson's first feature film was an adaptation of that play for screen, in 1959. Richardson reached the pinnacle of his success during the early sixties, with A Taste of Honey (1961), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) and Tom Jones (1963), with earned Richardson an Oscar. He continued to make films right up to his death in 1991, from complications of AIDS, but his output after 1963 was mostly lackluster.

A Taste of Honey fit most of the characteristics of the Kitchen Sink movement. It had the invigorating innocence, the powerfully evocative quality, and the anti-establishment orientation. It was exceptional, however, for focusing on a female protagonist, inclusion of a gay character, and depiction of an interracial relationship. In 1961, A Taste of Honey played to packed houses in England, despite being restricted to age sixteen and older (for explicit portrayals of interracial romance, homosexuality, and unwed motherhood). It also had enough of a run in America, in 1961, to draw me, as a high school senior, to a theater in Boston for a screening.

The Story: Jo (Rita Tushingham) is a schoolgirl in her teens, growing up in the industrial North of Britain, in a dockside city slum of Manchester. Neither beautiful nor homely, Jo has a bug-eyed, unglamorous visage that sparkles mainly with saucy irreverence. Jo lives with her sluttish and distinctly non-maternal mother, Helen (Dora Dryan), while struggling to make a go of it at school. She is often left to fend for herself when her mother goes dancing or entertains a man. It's also no help that her mother is about to remarry to Peter Smith (Robert Stephens), who has no use for Jo and would prefer that she disappear. Consequently, Jo is constantly fighting loneliness and in search of genuine affection.

Coming home from school one day, Jo scrapes her knee and meets a kindly, black sailor, Jimmy (Paul Danquah), who patches her up. The two begin seeing each other, play flirtatious games, and, finally, end up in bed together, more by Jo's initiative than Jimmy's. The next day, Jimmy's ship lifts anchor and leaves port, with Jimmy on board. When Helen's marriage is culminated, Jo takes a job at a shoe store and moves into an apartment of her own. One of her customers at the shoe store is a young, gay man, Geoffrey (Murray Melvin). Later, Jo and Geoffrey run into one another at the town carnival. Both are lonely, so despite being mismatched by sexual orientation, the pair hit it off and spend a happy afternoon together. Geoffrey was recently evicted (for entertaining a man in his room) and is currently living on the street. Jo's place is too large for her anyway, so she invites Geoffrey to share her apartment with her.

Geoffrey's relationship to Jo is part friend, part big sister, part mother hen, but entirely asexual. When it becomes evident that Jo is pregnant (with Jimmy's child), Geoffrey's paternal instincts come to the fore, while Jo's maternal ones remain quiescent. Jo is understandably frightened at the prospect of having a child (she's really still one herself) but Geoffrey wants to be there for her and wants to assume the role of the child's father. Geoffrey provides Jo with a quality of tender care and affection that she's never known. This unusual domestic arrangement is further shaken up when Jo's mother returns, having been cast out by her new husband. Helen and Geoffrey have no use for one another, so one or the other will have to go. The film's conclusion is neither trite nor predictable, so I'll leave it for readers to discover for themselves.

Themes: This is a film about loneliness and the need for affection. Jimmy is a lonely sailorman, in need of companionship. Helen is a lonely, middle-aged woman who craves male companionship. Geoffrey, as a gay man in a time and place inhospitable to gays, is also badly in need of companionship and someone to love. Jo's situation is especially desperate because she's the youngest of the four and still in the formative stage of her life. She may act the part of a tough, labor-class urchin, but she's starving for affection. She finds it for a few days with Jimmy and a few months with Geoffrey. Soon, she will be thrust into the role of having to give affection to an infant without having satisfied her own needs for that too rare commodity. One can anticipate that the cycle of family disruption will continue for this family into still another generation, while also likely ensuring their continuing poverty. That much is a standard kind of subject matter for social realism.

What separates this film from others is its exploration of social relationships that were highly unconventional in the early sixties (though a bit less so today). Jimmy and Jo's relationship is interracial while that of Geoffrey and Jo defies all conventional assumptions about pairings based on sexual preferences. Both matches were driven primarily by a mutual need for affection more than sexual attraction. "Polite" society remains callously indifferent to the loneliness of its disenfranchised characters (children in broken homes, unwed mothers, gays, divorcees, etc.), placing excessive priority on arbitrary characteristics for relationships, effectively blocking opportunities for some individuals to find relief from the pain of being alone and unloved. Love, affection, caring, and mutual support are such precious commodities that societies should support every benign opportunity for such nourishing human relationships, instead of being overly hung up on every relationship fitting into particular niches. What names we give to various kinds of relationships is less important, in my opinion, than fostering all the examples of relationships that are nourishing to mental health and happiness. Unrelenting loneliness can lead to anger, depression, or criminality, none of which serve the needs of human society.

Production Values: The script for this film was adapted by Tony Richardson and Shelagh Delaney from a highly successful play by Delaney. Delaney was just nineteen years of age when she wrote the play! The script uses a series of vignettes to establish the mood and spirit of the life of the Lancashire working-class, rather than providing a conventional kind of narrative. Much of the wry, witty dialog was transposed almost verbatim from the play. What is most remarkable about Delaney's youthful writing is her success at avoiding both stereotypical characters and predictable developments. Some of the elements of the film have been reused so many times since 1961 that they now appear clichéd, but in 1961, a young woman and a gay male as best friends was a novel and daring concept. Jo's highly ambivalent feelings about her unintended pregnancy are also handled with refreshing honesty. Richardson paced the film very effectively and placed the story in such realistic settings that the end result is a film that is even better than the play on which it was based.

The film's settings are highly realistic and naturalistic, from the seedy and dreary dockside streets to the raucous and colorful town fair. Walter Lassally provided superlative cinematography, capturing all the gritty atmosphere of Manchester's grubby slums, docks, and canals, using just natural daylight. The interior shots similarly reflect the untidiness of life in cramped urban apartments. In keeping with the concept of "social realism," many of the frames contribute to a detailed portrait of the activities of daily life. The soundtrack provides intermittent music of a cheery nature, contrasting a bit with the bleak substance of the story. The film opens and closes with children singing an old English children's rhyme.

Rita Tushingham, who was nineteen at the time this film was made, was selected from more than two thousand applicants for the role. This was her first film, but she went on to roles in such movies as The Leather Boys (1963), Girl with Green Eyes (1964), The Knack . . . . And How to Get It (1965), Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Bed Sitting Room (1969), and Under the Skin (1997). Tushingham's performance combined saucer-eyed innocence and gawky movements with genuine emotional depth. Murray Melvin's portrait of a lonely young gay man provided both sensitivity and credibility. Gay stereotypes were effectively muted or absent. He later performed in the film The Boy Friend (1971). Dora Bryan, a veteran of the theater, brought the most experience to the film and gives a nuanced character performance as Jo's mother, Helen. She had previously appeared in The Green Man (1956). Paul Danquah did a fine job in his debut film appearance, as Jimmy, and Robert Stevens was deliciously annoying, as Peter Smith.

Bottom-Line: This film is hard to find in America, though you can locate VHS copies, at a price, here and there. Apparently, there was or is an excellent DVD version available in the U.K. If you can find it and have playback capacity for region II DVDs, that would be the preferred way to go, since the DVD offers an excellent commentary track (featuring Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan, and Murray Melvin), a video essay focusing on the cinematography, and a biography of Tony Richardson. There's a DVD-ROM version, as well, that includes those extras plus another essay by Desmond Davis. The DVD versions include English subtitles for Americans who don't comprehend what passes for English in Lancashire! My humble VHS copy had no such adornments, but was at least relatively free from nicks and pings.

A Touch of Honey was a great film when it came out in 1961. Its issues are no longer so daring as they were forty-four years ago, making the film feel a bit dated. It remains a touching film, however, with a strong script, vibrant dialog, and excellent performances. The evocation of the Lancashire atmosphere of the sixties is superlative.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older