A Taste of Honey

Jo is sixteen and lives with her mother Helen in cheap rooms in Salford. Helen is always moving, always changing men, and takes no interest in her daughter. She marries a new man and leaves. Jo is on her own. She has a brief relationship with a sailor and becomes pregnant. He is gone. A young man named Geoffrey starts helping her; he is gay and has nowhere to stay himself. The two begin living together and build an order. Then Helen comes back. Tony Richardson directs. Rita Tushingham plays Jo, Dora Bryan plays Helen and Murray Melvin plays Geoffrey. The source is Shelagh Delaney's play. Delaney wrote the play at eighteen and the text made a great impression in British theatre. The film belongs to the social realist wave in British cinema; shooting took place in real locations, in the streets and at the docks. What is unusual for the period is its subjects: class, single motherhood, an interracial relationship and homosexuality are taken up at once. It won awards in many categories at the British academy and an acting award at Cannes. The narrative builds no character as a victim; Jo is hard, sardonic and expects pity from nobody. The ending is uncertain and the narrative offers no resolution. Who it is for: viewers who like British social realism and sixties cinema. Who it is not for: the register is bleak, the pace slow, and the technical quality carries the limits of its time.