The prize winning comedy drama of of a young girl's passionate love for life!...

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Unprecedented Acclaim from

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times Bittersweet Sensations Flow In British Film

HE sweet thing about "A Taste of Honey"—the sweet and delightfully lingering thing that gives a particular distinction to this widely hailed new British film is the firm flow of tolerance and compassion that floods in it like the pleasant flush of serenity and contentment that come as one drinks an excellent wine.

There are actually no villains in it. Not even society is blamed for the pitiful and poignant little crises that occur as it valiantly unfolds. It is set in the hideous environment of squalid Manchester slums, the cheap, tawdry playland of Blackpool and a bleak set of grimy midland docks. If ever there was an environment that could frame the angry fist against the sky, it is the environment of this comedy-drama.

And certainly you'd think the grubby people who swarm throug it might shake out one —at least one-disagreeable individual whose meanness you might despise. The blowzy, concupiscent mother who brazenly, blithely walks out on her tough, mud-faced 17-year-old daughter -you would think you might rightly despise her. Or the bouncy young Negro seaman who gets to the lonely, desperate girl and leaves her calamitously pregnant You might certainly be induced to him.

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Even the vagrant homosexual who meets up with the lonesome, pregnant child and moves into a shabby garret with her just to comfort and take care of her might offer a personality that could do with some sharp and dirty digs. No one is more easily rendered odious than an obvious homosexual.

Human Substance

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But Shelagh Delaney-bless her!-the young woman wrote the lovely play upon which the producer-director, Tony Richardson has based this film (and who reportedly lived a life quite similar to the one of the girl in it), does not have a trace of rancor in her. If she does, it is not revealed in the wonderful, rich human sub-

stance of her play and now of the film. And in his magnificent adaptation (with Miss Delaney) and direction, which is equally fine, Mr. Richardson has preserved and, indeed, expanded that gracious tolerance that is the keynote of the work.

These are not mean or cruel or vicious people who clatter about in the slums and the hives of the lower middle classes where bitterness and hate are supposed to breed. These are

simple and fairly honest people who are tough on the outside, yes-who badger and sass one another in the most astonishingly brash and impudent ways. The snarls between daughter and mother are titanically strident and glib. They whiplash at each other with delightfully coruscating wit. And the girl and the homosexual chivvy each other mercilessly. An odd sort of verbal flagellation is one of the few joys they can afford. Grown-Up Children

But down underneath they are softies. They are mere grown-up children with hearts that yearn for reassuring affection and dispositions that take delight in childish joys. One of the most lovely moments in the picture is in the heartbreaking scene at the end when the homosexual has been displaced by the returning mother in the position of comforter to the pregnant girl. As the lad leaves, a lonely, piteous figure with his few belongings packed in a tidy. bag, he stops for a moment to watch some youngsters leaping around a Guy Fawkes Day-bonfire in the yard of the slum. And suddenly a smile of sheer enchantment comes across his face. For a second, the drabness and sadness of his lot are dispelled by a breeze of fantasy.

Enough can't he said for everybody who had a hand or a rote in this film-for Rita Tushingham the supple little actress who plays the sassy, spunky girl as if she were a lustrous bit of childhood wrapped in a coil of barbed wire; for Dora Bryan, who plays the mother with disarming vitality and warmth; for Murray Melvin, who plays the homosexual with endearing graciousness, for the brilliant musical score of John Addison, which is most helpful, and more. But words are completely insufficient to express the true quality and extent of eloquence got into this picture by Miss Delaney and Mr. Richardson. Theirs was the rare achievement of creating poetry amid ugliness, of discovering the richness of life in squalor. They have given us a memorable film. (Reprinted from N.Y. Times of Sun., May 20, 1962)