A Taste of Honey (1961)

A Taste of Honey (1961) (DVD) (*)

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Screened, competed or awarded at:
BAFTA Awards
Cannes Film Festival
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
Danish ( Subtitles )
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
English ( Mono )
Finnish ( Subtitles )
Norwegian ( Subtitles )
Swedish ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
Denmark ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
96 min

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen (1.66:1)

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Scene Access
Black & White

Movie filmed in 1961 and produced in:
United Kingdom ( Great Britain, Ireland )

Directed By:
Tony Richardson

Written By:
Shelagh Delaney

Actors:
Dora Bryan ..... Helen
Robert Stephens ..... Peter Smith
Rita Tushingham ..... Jo [Josephine]
Murray Melvin ..... Geoffrey Ingham
Paul Danquah ..... Jimmy
Michael Bilton ..... Landlord
Eunice Black ..... Schoolteacher
David Boliver ..... Bert
Margo Cunningham ..... Landlady
A. Goodman ..... Rag and Bone Man
John Harrison ..... Cave Attendant
Veronica Howard ..... Gladys
Moira Kaye ..... Doris
Graham Roberts ..... Woman in Shoe Shop
Valerie Scarden ..... Nurse
Rosalie Scase ..... Shoe Store Proprietor
Herbert Smith ..... Ship's Mate
Jack Yarker

Synopsis:

Shelogh Delaney's play 'A Taste of Honey' had already run in the West End and on Broadway when director Tony Richardson continued his vein of British New Wave films of "kitchen-sink" realism with this award winning adaptation, shot on location in Salford and Blackpool. Rita Tushingham makes her indelible screen debut as Jo, a young girl who falls pregnant to a black sailor while he is on shore leave after leaving home and her floozie of a mother - a revelatory performance by Dora Bryan. Jo befriends Geoff (Murray Melvin), a homosexual who comes to the rescue by offering to look after the baby. This relatively blissful state of affairs is short-lived; before long, Jo's hateful mother, descends upon her daughter and her "family," with all her debilitating emotional baggage intact.

Jo is an awkward, shy 17-year-old girl living with her promiscuous alcoholic mother, Helen. Desperately longing to simply be loved, when her mother's latest "romance" drives Jo out of their apartment, she spends the night with a black sailor on a brief shore leave. But when Jo's mother abandons her to move in with her latest lover, Jo finds a job and a room for herself, meets Geoffrey, a shy and lonely homosexual, and allows him to share her flat. When she discovers that she is pregnant with the sailor's child, Geoffrey, grateful for her friendship, looks after her, even offering marriage. Their brief taste of happiness is short-lived for Jo's fickle and domineering mother, her own romantic hopes dashed, appears on the scene, determined to drive the gentle Geoffrey from the flat and take over the care of her daughter, rearranging everything to suit herself.

Black and white, gay and straight, mothers and daughters, class, and coming of age. Jo is working class, in her teens, living with her drunk and libidinous mother in northern England. When mom marries impulsively, Jo is out on the streets; she and Geoffrey, a gay co worker who's adrift himself, find a room together. Then Jo finds herself pregnant after a one night stand with Jimmy, a Black sailor. Geoffrey takes over the preparations for the baby's birth, and becomes, in effect, the child's father. The three of them seem to have things sorted out when Jo's mother reappears on the scene, assertive and domineering. Which "family" will emerge?

This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 09 June, 2015.