Un goût de miel

The 1960's brought about many of my favourite films about the English working class experience: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; Saturday Night, Sunday Morning; This Sporting Life and - naturally - Kes. Coming from the North and being around - just - during the sixties helps naturally.

I dislike the term "kitchen sink" because it puts too many people off a film that while bleak remains so true it almost hurts. There isn't a word, phrase or scene in this movie that I don't believe and remember: I was there, although not in Salford!

A dimly lit world of booze, cups of tea, canals, seaside trips, bonfires, repressed emotions, unprotected sex (and what follows) and the limits and cheap thrills of the Northern English working class.

In 1961 this must have looked like the start of a new age of film. Real stories about real life. Almost a docu-drama in the modern parlance. However it never really happened. Why? Because there is more skill required than you might imagine and even this verges on going over the top. You could say it is tries to tick too many boxes. And isn't really true drama because it stops at a point in which so many threads remain loose.

(I suppose you could say it ends with the characters facing up to the realities that they have been so long running away from - but will they actually achieve it?)

Star of the show is Rita Tushington who never went on to do much with her career after being given the part of a lifetime to start it all off. Murray Melvin is also good as the homosexual boyfriend who wants to help out - although maybe in a misguided way.

A Taste of Honey has its limits and you could attack it for being snobbish. It is an artistic product born of the middle class - but it remains utterly true in a way that is mostly absent in cinema today.

It's a timely coincidence that my exploration of British Free Cinema generally referred to as 'kitchen sink' dramas made me discover "A Taste of Honey" right during Pride month.

From my preliminary reading about the synopsis I was expecting a sort of docu-drama about unexpected teenage pregnancy in patriarcal times but I missed an important clue: the original successful play (many British classics derive from plays anyway) was written by Shelagh Delaney when she was 18, which means with no agenda or narrative requirements, only the free inspiration from a young woman in the budding of her independence.

Born in 1938, she literally served as a bridge between the lost generation and the baby-boomers who -at the film's release- were teenagers, and before the Beatles would infuse their exuberant adult-defying insouciance through in "A Hard Day's Night", before Tom Courtenay would be the spokesperson of angry youth as a liar and a long-distance runner, it was Rita Tushingham as Jo, the tough pint-sized tom-boy-like brunette with gigantic expressive blue eyes who let her anger implode with particles of joy and devil-may-care detachment spilled all over the black-and-white screen. And let me say that after so many "young angry men" films, I'm pleased and not the least surprised that it was the woman's one to introduce so many milestones one would easily lose the track.

Josephine, aka Jo, is a 19-year old girl, raised by a single mother specialized in the oldest profession, she's played by a delightful and almost endearing Dory Bryan and that Jo calls her Helen is a little taboo-breaking detail. Obviously, Jo was an accident but Helen -if not the looks of her fading youth- still got the heart and is far from the abusive type. To put it straight, if you expect stereotypes in that film you have another thing coming. It's not even the most publicized aspect of the story but there's the romance with Jimmy, a Black sailor played by Paul Danquah; they love each other, their interactions are sincere, and so we're never left with the feeling that he 'abandoned' her, neither is Jo. And Richardson doesn't let us interpret Jo's open-mindedness the wrong way, no she didn't like Jimmy for rebellion's sake, but simply because she liked him... her feelings precede her choices no matter what.

There's just too much modernity to handle in the film that I don't even feel like praising the artistic aspect. What for? All right, it's the first British shot on locations and to enhance the realism of the story, Richardson gratifies with details of the street life in England, a day at the carnival where you can see people barely noticing the actors, shots on rivers, docks, shabby houses: the realism feels real. But any passable director can get the right shots in and just let the camera roll when you've got the right settings. However, what Richardson does and in my opinion better than his next film "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" is to show a certain truth in his characters by depriving them from any narrative guidance.

Tushingham brings a quirky freshness and spontaneity switching from joy to anger to sheer confusion in a way that yet never confuses us, she argues a lot with Helen but it's never played for melodrama, as the mothers points it out "we enjoy it" and it's true that these characters never seem to have clear ideas of what they're doing but somehow we understand them. I think I understood that it was inevitable that a girl like Jo would be immune to the traditional expectations: she's like the male counterpart of Albert Finney's character in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", the man who made a married woman pregnant and could left her for a younger gal. But Jo might be an angry young woman but she's no victim and she's braver, embracing her pregnancy as a fact, not a punishment, only a link to a chain of events that form the path of her life. She deals with it without any hatred or desire of revenge against men.

The film doesn't shame men but establish two male figures that couldn't have been more opposite: there's Helen's husband (Robert Stephens) who's the perfect macho and with his mustache looks like an alpha-male version of Walt Disney, ordering her do the laundry, drinking, flirting, belittling and blackmailing her; and there's Geoff, Murray Melvin as the homosexual who never hid his identity, suspecting that she wouldn't reject her. Her first reaction is curiosity but they quickly become roommates and friends and it goes as far as Geoff proposing to be the father for the child's sake, he does love Jo and that says something about his true need for tenderness and a recognition of being. Murray brings a total naturalness in that man not afraid to be who is and with his long face, owl-like eyes and aquiline nose that reminded me of a young Jean Rochefort, he's got the awkward charm of an effeminate man still proud enough to hide his inner sensibility.

Now, "A Taste of Honey" has no pretension to teach a lesson, but only to show people entrapped in their social conditions and forced to be characters rather than people, Helen wants to believe that she's young enough to attract men, to satisfy her ego, Jo wants to be a good mother but is afraid her child might inherit some traits from her father and there's Geoff who is who he is and yet tries to find a semblance of 'normality' that can englobe his own lifestyle choices ...... Maybe the closest to a bitter taste to that "honey" is that the reality of the world is too much to handle and it's sad to see these free people becoming characters again, as if they ended up thinking "who are we kidding?".

Still, on the film's 60th birthday, one should applaud the extraordinary performers, the gutsy director and the visionary Shelagh Delaney.

Taste of Honey is evocative of life in Lancashire in the 1960's. The scenes of what were called the "Whit Walks" must bring back memories to many Lancashire folk, as must the scenes of England's most famous seaside resort; Blackpool. The film made Rita Tushingham a houshold name. Her portrayal of the the schoolgirl "done wrong" is second to none. Her large wide eyes show the fear and her innocence at the same time. Dora Bryan is magnificent as the "couldn't-care-less" mother who's quest for a good time is at the expense of all others. The film is well worth a watch, particularly if you are a fan of British films of the 60's. Watch out for a continuity gaff in the scenes on the pier!

I first watched this film when I was about 14 years old sat at home with my mam and dad and I was absolutely riveted. Ever since then I have kept an eye out for it in the TV listings but never spotted it until now !...they have finally released it on DVD and it was worth the wait. The black and white photography is stunning, painting a grey stark picture of life in the poverty stricken back streets of Salford and Eccles in the late 50's and early 60's. I grew up around most of the locations, many of the streets are now bulldozed and many of the historical landmarks are now set against different backdrops...maybe not as grim, but in my opinion not as interesting or compelling. The theme of the film is warm and loving giving a realistic picture of people in the area at that time..friendly, caring, enjoying life when they can as life could be hard, poor housing, low wages the dirt and grime of living and working in the post war northern inner city.

Barton Swing Bridge and the Manchester Liners Shipping Company, Old Trafford Football Ground - complete with floodlight pylons, the atmosphere of a back street boozer and Blackpools brightly lit amusements are seen in all their grim Majesty.

The acting is tremendous,Dora Bryan superbly cast as the selfish mother...she should have gone on to stronger roles after this performance. Rita Tushingham the gawky teenager full of youthful wonder of her harsh world and Murray Melvin as the young adolescent battling with his sexuality and feelings for the enchanting Tushingham.

It really is a must see for anyone interested in this genre or who lives or has worked around Manchester. It shows the hope and warmth of people who have nothing, who only maybe aspire to a simple life...but who have had a Taste Of Honey.......

Jo's (Rita Tushingham) a daydreaming teen with a distracted mom (Dora Bryan) in search of Mr. Right or a reasonable facsimile. When ma hooks up with a guy she leaves Jo to fend for herself. Jo enters into a romance with a boat cook who ships out to sea after impregnating her and she forms a living arrangement with a gay man (Murray Melvin) to make ends meet and for moral support. When mom returns the two lock horns, debating who is the better fix for Jo and her family way.

What might pass for a very dark Hallmark domestic drama today was a groundbreaking event in 1961. Interracial relationships were scarce on the screen and homosexuality would be a crime until the law was relaxed in 67. Director Tony Richardson met the controversy head on in Honey, softening neither the outcome or its characters. Tushingham is exasperatingly brilliant as the independently minded Jo. You sympathize with her but she can be trying and stubborn. Murray Melvin is also sympathetic, avoiding caricature flamboyance with a low key sensitivity, stating his case as an outsider. Dora Bryan as Jo's floozy mom is abrasively outstanding as she lectures Jo with challenged nurturing skills on the ugly reality of her class and future.

Director Richardson captures the bleak industrial landscape of Manchester, England, managing to romanticize it in moments between the lovers but refusing to sell out the story with its sober, somber climax.

A glum well played drama.