A Taste of Honey

Director Tony Richardson helped launch the British "kitchen sink realism" movement, exploring social issues featuring working-class characters on stage and screen. Richardson directed both the stage production of playwright Shelagh Delaney's 1958 A Taste of Honey and this 1961 screen adaptation. Rita Tushingham made her screen debut as Jo, the teenage daughter of Helen (Dora Bryan), an alcoholic single mother who marries a fun-loving, hard-drinking man. The rebellious Jo runs off, gets pregnant from a brief affair with a shy black sailor, and becomes roommates with a young gay man (Murray Melvin) who looks after her during the pregnancy until Helen tracks her down and steps in to help, stirring up old conflicts. The film is set and shot in the northern port town of Salford, where Richardson captures the working class shops and pubs of the town and the industrial drear of the docks with a documentary realism and a poetic eye that finds beauty without romanticizing the poverty. The melodrama is downplayed in favor of sensitive portraits of anxious, anguished characters who feel abandoned by the world, and in some cases by their own families. A Taste of Honey won four BAFTA awards and acting awards for Tushingham and Melvin at Cannes. Newly restored, extras include new interviews with Tushingham and Melvin, archival interviews, Richardson's 1956 short documentary "Momma Don't Allow," and an essay by film scholar Colin MacCabe. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)