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.

Rita Tushingham is excellent as an unhappy girl. Her mother (Dora Bryan) is a slattern. The mother is interested primarily in her dubious good looks and gives almost no attention to daughter Jo (Tushingham.) In one of the few heart-to-heart talks -- in which she tells Jo that her (Jo's) father was a simpleton -- she says that we always remember our first.

Jo's first is indeed a very handsome sailor. He's black.

I'm not going to give anything beyond this away other than to say that Jo becomes best friends with a gay man Murray Melvin. He is the best thing that ever happened to her.

Shelagh Delaney, who wrote the play as a very young woman, wrote the screenplay with director Tony Richardson. It's opened up but not in an annoying manner. I think it's one of Richardson's very best.

I saw this when it first came out. I was a kid and very impressionable. I haven't seen it since but find I'd forgotten little. And that includes the wonderful music. I had never heard the song children sing at the beginning, about a big ship sailing, before nor have I heard it since (until tonight when I watched it again.) But I have never forgotten it.

In the late 1950s and through the 1960s, the French New Wave movies gained a lot of attention internationally. Unlike traditional films, the New Wave films focused on ordinary but usually very flawed people....nothing like the Hollywood type stories. For example, in "Breathless" the story focuses on a common thief and his affair with a young girl. And, in the Antoine Doinel films, you follow a juvenile delinquent through life's ups and downs. Overall, these sorts of pictures really excelled when it came to realism...but also were frequently very depressing.

Despite the French making many of these movies, there were examples in other countries that were very similar...but never got the same sort of attention from critics and film experts. A great example is "A Taste of Honey"...a film which seems exactly like a New Wave film, though it's British.

The story is about Jo (Rita Tushingham),a disaffected teen who is being raised by a mother who never seems to grow into being a functional adult. Her mom skips on paying the rent, chases around with men and, generally, treats her daughter like a boarder instead of her child. Not surprisingly, with mom out doing her thing, Jo gets herself into trouble...and the film shows her rocky road to adulthood.

Many story elements in "A Taste of Honey" shocked me. No, they aren't at all shocking by today's standards, but the British censor board had long heavily censored many much more innocent stories...such as banning some Hollywood horror films as well as the 1960 British thriller "Peeping Tom". However, in this one, premarital sex is heavily implied and Jo eventually finds herself pregnant and living with a gay man...hardly the sort of stuff you'd expect in early 60s British cinema...especially since being gay was STILL a crime in the UK at the time.

So is it any good? Well, yes and no. The story, at times, makes you cringe as you see Jo make terrible choices since she is desperately lonely and rather sad. And, much of the film is slow, meandering and non-theatrical. It's certainly NOT pleasant in any way. However, it is well crafted and striking...which is true of MANY New Wave films as well.