Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46207 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-10-21
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Black & White, PAL
• Original language: English, Hungarian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Special Features
English
Region 2
Commentary By Dora Bryan And Rita Tushingham And Murray Melvin
Video Essay By Cinematographer Walter Lassally
Picture Gallery
Printable Essay By Cameraman Desmond Davis
Directors Biography

Synopsis
Tony Richardson continued in the vein of kitchen-sink realism with this adaptation of Shelagh Delaney's novel of working-class life. Set in England in the early 1960s, A TASTE OF HONEY stars Rita Tushingham as the waifish Jo, a plain 17-year-old girl who is dragged from one shabby bed-sitter to another by Helen (Dora Bryan), her promiscuous, alcoholic termagant of a mother. When Helen and her current lover, Peter (Robert Stephens), take a holiday in Blackpool, Jo goes along and, while walking on the beach, meets Jimmy (Paul Danquah), a black sailor on leave. After they spend the night together Jimmy's ship leaves for points unknown. Helen and Peter have impulsively decided to marry, and they move into his flat, leaving Jo in the cold. She gets a job in a shoe store, where she meets gay and mild-mannered Geoffrey, and the two decide to move into a flat together. Jo soon discovers she's carrying Jimmy's child, news that depresses her. But Geoffrey couldn't be happier, and he begins knitting baby clothes, goes to a clinic for child-care instruction, and even offers to marry Jo. This moving film is exceptionally well acted and directed; it is a tribute to Richardson's boldness in taking on the theme of miscegenation, then a much more controversial issue.

Customer Reviews

A Taste of Honey, a taste of pure nostalgia
Shot mainly on location in the cities of Salford and Manchester, this gritty 1961 film by Tony Richardson, based on the play by Shelagh Delaney, deals with what were the sensitive subjects of the time namely, mixed race relationships, homosexuality and teenage pregnancy. Jo, who is first seen as an awkward schoolgirl,lives with her somewhat wayward and sluttish mother, Helen, who has an eye for the men and seems always to be one step ahead of the rent man. Jo meets and falls for a young black sailor, Jimmy, whilst mother Helen agrees to marry local business shark Peter, who has an eye for the ladies. Following an aborted trip to Blackpool from which Jo returns alone early, she meets up with her new boyfriend and spends the night with him.
Helen returning the following day packs her bag and leaves to get married and move to bungalow with her new found husband. Jo, on her own not for the first time, finds her own place to live and a job in a local shoeshop. She subsequently meets Geoff, a kind and gentle gay student who has been evicted from his lodgings because of his sexuality. Geoff is invited to move in with Jo and in essence becomes a substitute mother to her especially when she reveals she is pregnant to a "black prince". Although Geoff has feelings for Jo she rejects his advances and his offer of marriage "for the babys sake". Despite their apparant happiness together the peace is shattered by the return of Helen to look after her daughter in her hour of need, resulting in Geoffs timely and prudent departure.

This film portrays all the prejudices of the time but whilst pointed is also poignant. The characters of Jo, Geoff and Jimmy seem almost childlike and naive in their approach to life and their circumstances but Helen and Jo add humour to their mother and daughter relationship with some brilliant "catty" dialogue.

Strong performances by both Rita Tushingham as Jo,in her first film and by the irrepressible Dora Bryan as Helen. Murray Melvin sensitively plays Geoff and Robert Stephens plays Helens learing husband Peter.

A film for the classic film buff or for anyone who remembers Salford and Manchester in the 1960s

Defines an era
This film defines the beginning of the sixties, with Britain emerging out of the long years of postwar austerity, and as such, is useful for students of postwar history as well as cultural studies. More than anything, it depicts, without romanticism, the working class ! The pub scenes and a crowded Blackpool depict a bygone age when youth culture was becoming available to all, technology hadn't wiped out people's jobs and much of the Victorian housing hadn't been cleared in favour of housing blocks.

For people now in their 20s and 30s, this film marks the start of "our time" - which could mean single parenthood, awkward adolescence and materialism - amongst other things... and I'm sure our heroine Jo would make a good mother, in her own way. Does she remind anyone of their own mother? Time has aged this film like a classic wine.

Whilst the film doesn't romanticise the people involved, it is certainly a film with a sweeping romantic current. Expression of this is through the powerful and consuming but often clumsy, doomed relationships depicted in the film. Arguably this is the first and last social(ist) realist love films.

Salford does look pretty grim in this film, littered with smokestacks and factories, but there is so much depth in the performances of Murray Melvin, Rita Tushingham and especially Dora Bryan, that an eventual view of the city emerges as a human, even compassionate place.

Of course if the director and writer had set out to make such an epoch-defining film it wouldn't have happened. But it appears they stumbled into making what I would argue is one of the finest British films ever made.

A Desert Island film
I first saw this film shortly after it came out in 1961 and have been in love with it ever since. I have always thought of it as a "quiet landmark" in the history of cinema and naturally assumed it would have been among the first to be issued on DVD. But noisier less interesting films got in the way and this one has had to wait its turn to see the light of new technology. It's a worthwhile wait and it's a timeless classic. Rita Tushinghams performance is unforgettable, as is the rest of the cast. Sadly, I think "Taste Of Honey" has been left out of the conversation when the subject of "new wave films of the 60's" comes up. Having initially seen this film along with the works of Truffaut, Goddard and Tarkovsky I would rank "Taste Of Honey" among that wave of films that irrevocably changed our view of cinema. It's ironic that the DVD of this film is available the same time as "Ivan's Childhood", Tarkovsky's masterpiece. In its way, "Taste Of Honey" holds its own, albeit "Ivan" is a wildly different kind of film. "A Taste Of Honey" above all is a wonderful work of art that shows no sign of age and no loss of character. It is an essential film.