A Taste of Honey [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Tony Richardson Tony Richardson

Overview

Director Tony Richardson adapted the screenplay of A Taste of Honey from the "kitchen sink" stage play by Shelagh Delaney. Rita Tushingham plays a working-class British teenager, living with her drink-sodden, libertine mother Dora Bryan. Denied affection by her selfish mother, Tushingham is pushed further in the background when Bryan impulsively marries her latest boyfriend Robert Stephens. The girl takes a job at a shoe store, then moves in with her kindly homosexual employer Murray Melvin. The two lost souls live in harmony until Tushingham becomes pregnant after a casual affair with black sailor Paul Danquah. Melvin comes to the rescue by offering to look after the baby. This relatively blissful state of affairs is short-lived; before long, Tushingham's hateful mother, having been kicked out by Stephens, descends upon her daughter and her "family," with all her debilitating emotional baggage intact. A poignant denouement caps this riveting slice-of-life drama.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/23/2016
UPC:	0715515184717
Original Release:	1961
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:40:00
Sales rank:	16,028

Special Features

New interviews with actors Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin Audio interview with director and coscreenwriter Tony Richardson from the 1962 Cannes Film Festival Excerpt from a 1960 television interview with A Taste of Honey playwright Shelagh Delaney Interview from 1998 with cinematographer Walter Lassally Remaking British Theater: Joan Littlewood and "A Taste of Honey," a new piece about the film's stage origins, featuring an interview with theater scholar Kate Dorney Momma Don't Allow (1956), a Free Cinema short film by Richardson, shot by Lassally

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Rita Tushingham	Josephine
Robert Stephens	Peter Smith,Girls on Pier
Dora Bryan	Helen
Murray Melvin	Geoffrey Ingham
Paul Danquah	Jimmy
David Boliver	Bert
Moira Kaye	Doris
Herbert Smith	Shoe Shop Proprietor
Valerie Scarden	Woman in Shoe Shop
Rosalie Scase	Nurse
Veronica Howard	Gladys
Jack Yarker	Ship's Mate
Margo Cunningham	Landlady
John Harrison	Cave Attendant
A. Goodman	Rag and Bone Man
Eunice Blalck	Schoolteacher
Janet Rugg	Girls on Pier
Jean Cadell	Actor
Eunice Black	School Mistress

Technical Credits

Shelagh Delaney

Tony Richardson	Director,Producer
Shelagh Delaney	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Critic Peter John Dyer called A Taste of Honey "tart and lively round the edges and bitter at the core." It's a well-acted 1961story of a working-class young British woman who has an affair with a black sailor and becomes pregnant. A homosexual friend proves more helpful than her loose-living mother. Controversial for its time, the powerful drama was adapted for the screen by writer Shelagh Delaney and director Tony Richardson from Shelagh's London and Broadway play. Rita Tushingham made her debut in the starring role. Its black comic tone and taboo subject matter were ahead of their time, and it presaged such later studies of biracial love as To Sir With Love and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Herb Alpert's instrumental version of the theme song was a huge international hit.

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