through the centre of a Northern industrial town, shooting extension of this tradition in the work of Tony Richardson. A Taste of Honey ALBERT HUNT buildings and statues from a low angle as if we were seeing them gliding past Jo’s eyes through the bus window. The Think of Look Back in Anger with its phoney opening camera-work is again arty and self-indulgent. It is also an sequence in the jazz club (a sequence which makes nonsense, echo of the sequence in We Are the Lambeth Boys in which incidentally, of Jimmy Porter’s isolation), followed by that It is hard to write objectively about films like A Taste of Honey. T he British film industry is so the boys, on their way home from Mill Hill, pass through the picturesque walk home through the dark streets, with Jimmy infantile that when an adult film does slip through it is tempting to forget about criticism and West End. Only Reisz was, of course, making a sharp from time to time blowing his trumpet; or think of the simply ram it between the teeth of the Carry On brigade. Let me begin, then, by welcoming A comment on the contrast between the England of West­ gratuitous atmospheric shots of the faces of the old men Taste of Honey just because it has been made. minster and the England only just across the river where the Jimmy and Helena pass in the park; or that calculated last boys live. In A Taste of Honey the only purpose of the shot of Jimmy and Alison, silhouetted on a footbridge at a All the same, if the long-promised revival in British cinema is ever to take place, we ought, I sequence is the creation of a vague “atmosphere” : on the station, lost in a swirl of steam. Or consider the opening of think, to be taking a long, cool look at those films which are “on our side.” What the cinema sound-track a group of children sings “The big ship sails The Entertainer, with Jean seeing off her brother who is needs at the moment is not a liberal nodding of the heads, but a serious critical analysis. Fifteen . .. . ”, a song which, before the end of the sequence, is leaving for the Middle East from yet another railway station. years after Italian neo-realism, it is time to stop boggling at pictures of Salford; and three years taken up and orchestrated in a big way. When, as Jo and The whole sequence (which again takes place before the after the first production of Shelagh Delaney’s play the question that must be faced is how far Helen finally get off the bus, a handsome young negro credits) is shot at an angle. (Where have we seen that Tony Richardson has succeeded in finding a film language to communicate the play’s intensely appears from the top deck and helps Jo with the bags, before ?) personal vision. Shelagh Delaney’s work is a remarkable blend of freshness and maturity, and it is suspicion is confirmed. Shelagh Delaney’s swift and oblique against these qualities that Tony Richardson’s film needs to be judged. observation is to be replaced by a heavy-handed literalness, This is the style which imposes itself on the delicate structure with every point over-explained and the emotional truth of Shelagh Delaney’s play and transforms it into a turgid drenched in atmospherics. (Later, Richardson carefully drama of painful obviousness. Nothing must be left to the explains Geof: he is the first customer to whom Jo makes a imagination - we are not even spared the tastelessly em­ sale in the shoe-shop where we are shown her working. Shelagh Delaney’s approach to the theatre is based on a similarly unsentimental note. The Boy kisses Jo. “Don’t do barrassing scene in which Geof goes to the clinic and borrows Shelagh Delaney’s script becomes so perfunctory at this concern for truth and a distrust of the phoney. Her plays are that,” she says. “Why not?” he asks. “I like it,” she a doll. And the camera wanders drearily and predictably point as to suggest an understable lack of interest in the not explanations, but presentations. She presents a series of replies. There is a sudden fade-out, followed by music and from one picturesque location to another. whole idiotic contrivance). images of people - enjoying themselves, being lonely, wedding bells - Helen’s music and Helen’s wedding bells. quarrelling, in love - and the quality of her plays, that fusion And this is the last we see of the Boy in the play. Blackpool is there, of course, even though this means doing This opening sequence is, unfortunately, a useful example of of affection, toughness and affirmation which is so hard to violence to the relationship between Helen and Jo. When Richardson’s approach to cinema. The material is fresh, but Jo protests in the play about Helen leaving her, (“You should put into words, springs from her rigorous concern with the There is, in every scene, a feeling of immediacy. We don’t the language is stale and tired. And on closer investigation prepare my meals like a proper mother”), Helen replies, emotional truth of each image. Nothing is blown up, want to know where Jo met the Boy or Geof. What we are it turns out to be, not the language of a breakthrough, but the characteristically, “Have I ever laid claim to being a proper “dramatised” in the conventional sense of the word, but on interested in is the subtly shifting relationships we see on the language of all that is most orthodox in the British prestige mother?”, and goes. In the film, she lets Jo tag along, then, the other hand there is none of that self-conscious under­ stage. Was Jo’s father really an idiot? It doesn’t matter. film - the language of David Lean. guiltily, her conscience struggling with her selfishness, statement with which dramatists like Rattigan hide their What does matter is Jo’s immediate response to this story. lack of conviction. Instead, there is a simple and direct sends her home by bus. In the play, Helen has no conscience A Taste of Honey is written in a stage idiom that is com­ David Lean stands firmly in the tradition of British film- response to human experience. Not that the experience is and Jo needs no excuse for her actions: here, conscience and pletely fresh. A successful translation to the screen demands making. Extracts from his films are often offered to students itself simple. Shelagh Delaney is sensitive to the slightest excuse are provided, and the moral poise of the original an equally fresh film language. What is the language Tony as examples of the skill of the director. He is equally at changes of mood and feeling. Her dialogue captures with crashes into sentimentality - but meanwhile Richardson has Richardson has, in fact, used ? home with a wide range of material, from Noel Coward to astonishing precision the sudden switches of thought, the Dickens and H. G. Wells, precisely because he has nothing impulsive movements of the mind that make relationships The film opens with a long sequence before and during the personal to bring to his medium. He is a skilful translater alive and dynamic. The texture of her work is very close in RICHARDSON’S FIRST FEATURE: “ LOOK BACK IN ANGER’’ credits. It can be divided into three main parts - Jo at into the picturesque. feeling to that of Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye. There school playing netball, Jo and her mother escaping through is the same feeling of spontaneity, the same exploration of a window from a basement flat, and a long bus-ride to the Take, for instance, the climax of Brief Encounter, a classic immediate impressions, the same gaiety mingled with other side of the town, at the end of which the Black Boy is sequence of the British cinema. A woman and her lover are astringency. The plays are almost staged jazz: not improvised introduced as a stranger who helps Jo to carry the bags. about to part for ever. They sit in a station buffet. A it’s true, but arrangements in a jazz idiom. What is the purpose of this sequence ? The opening shots gossipy friend joins them, spoiling their last conversation. place Jo in her school environment, but much of the point is Presently, Alec leaves to go to another platform to catch his For example, the love affair between Jo and the Black Boy is lost because Richardson calls attention to the camera-work: train. There is a momentary diversion, and the heroine finds presented, not in the form of a logically developing story, but he makes the camera follow the ball itself, crazily, up, down, herself alone. She runs out on to the platform just as an in two brief statements, full of joy and affection and com­ round, across. express is announced. From the opposite platform, Lean pletely devoid of sentimentality. “I’ll be gone soon, too,” photographs her coming out of the buffet, then slowly tilts says the Boy. “What then ?” “My heart’s broke,” Jo replies, the camera. She closes her eyes, and the train rushes in and the Boy adds, “You can lie in bed at night and hear my The episode of the escape from the flat is a more serious front of her at a crazy angle. When the train has gone by, ship passing down the old canal. It’s cold in here. No fire ?” mistake. The mother is, of course, played by Dora Bryan, she opens her eyes again, and Lean slowly tilts the camera There is nothing ponderous about this relationship, just as who makes a brave stab at the part, trying hard to escape level. there is nothing ponderous about the scene in which the two from her usual typed comedy role. But this episode, which of them get “engaged”. The Boy produces a Woolworths is completely unnecessary anyway, firmly establishes her in Lean offers us a heavily “dramatised” sequence, pictur­ ring; it’s too big for Jo’s finger and she asks him for a piece that role, and makes her efforts all the more difficult. esquely photographed in a conventionally “cinematic” of string to tie it round her neck. The Boy feels in his setting (a thesis could be written on the use of the railway pocket and finds a toy car, and at once both of them begin But it is the long bus-ride which is most typical of Tony station in would-be realist cinema), with an unbalanced playing with it. And the whole relationship ends on a Richardson’s style. He takes us on a slowly moving trip mind cliche thrown in for emphasis. It is easy to see the 6 7 been able to give us a castrated version of O Dreamland. These festivals and expeditions are continually accompanied father was an idiot, Dora Bryan is suddenly very touching In the current issue of Sight and Sound, Gabriel Pearson and with a counterpoint of child-song. Whenever Richardson and alive. And much of the credit for all these performances Eric Rhode, like two elephants inspecting a daisy, try to The Whit Walks are there, too - this is where Jo meets Geof takes the camera out of doors, streets, graveyards, fields and must certainly be shared with Tony Richardson. come to terms with Breathless. “As humanists,” they write, for the second time - and the visit to a fairground, and the hills seem to be filled with picturesquely dirty children “our first reaction . . . . is as much one of bewilderment as conversation amongst the tombstones, and the trip to the playing singing games. Nowhere is Richardson’s tendency But the film must ultimately be written off as a failure, and, of pleasure; for these films, according to our theories, country. (Geof’s bungled kiss is snatched on a hill). And towards abstraction more irritatingly apparent. The what is worse, as a pretentious failure. It is something that shouldn’t work.” But, “our intensity of response,” they note there is a guided tour through an underground cave - Jo and children are not included because they are interesting and millions of cinemagoers will come into contact, for the first with surprise, “confirms these films as works of art.” They Geof, holding tapers and flickeringly lit in close-up, solemnly alive. They are atmospheric props, part of the pseudo- time, with Shelagh Delaney’s work: but this only makes it finally console themselves with the thought that “in psycho­ discuss their problems against a background of black rock, poetic blur. all the more disappointing that the opportunity to create analytic terms the enigma does betray a meaning.” Sniff, dripping with echoing water. It is not surprising that Rita something fresh and valid on its own terms has been bungled. sniff. Tushington and Murray Melvin seem to be trying hard to This search for the “poetic” completely destroys the real What is more, this failure to find an adequate language is not forget that they are where Richardson has put them. The poetry of Shelagh Delaney’s play. The Boy’s casual, “You an isolated one. Since Room at the Top was heralded as a Pearson and Rhode approach these films warily, through final sequence, inevitably, is played out on bonfire night. can lie in bed at night and hear my ship passing down the breakthrough three years ago, only one of the new British philosophy. “Their existentialism,” they write, “may be old canal”, is, for example, transformed into a self­ films - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - has been partial and muddled but it does support their aesthetic. And PHOTOS BY SIGHT AND SOUND consciously restrained Big Scene. The pair say good-bye at really satisfying. Karel Reisz’s sensitive handling of his since it is this philosophy that their language of smoke and BONFIRE NIGHT: RICHARDSON ON THE SET the docks in the pale cold light of morning - the word material resulted in an honest, if minor film. But for the dreams enacts, we need to know its main assumptions.” cliche accurately conveys the images on the screen: Jo most part the British cinema has so far failed to exploit the watching the Boy leave her across a bridge, the bridge new, if limited, opportunities. The pomposity of this is, of course, absurd; but it reflects an swinging to emphasise the separation, the wasteland of the attitude that is ultimately deadening. Artists do not begin docks, Jo watching, a ship sliding slowly, very slowly, away Moreover, this failure of response is not confined to the with philosophies whose main assumptions “we need to down the canal to the tune of “The big ship sails.” cinema. The recent television translation of John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave's Dance showed a lack of understanding know” : it is, in fact, because, “according to our theories”, working-class locations, local festivals, fairgrounds and Or compare the following scenes. Jo is worried about the that is frightening. Even in the theatre, most directors have children in the streets ought to work, that Richardson has baby. “The baby’ll be born dead or daft.” “You’re feeling not begun to come to terms with what is actually happening, repeatedly fallen back on humanist conventions instead of a bit depressed, Jo,” says Geof, and she replies, “I’m feeling or what, in fact, has already happened: an adequate English exploring new material. nothing.” But when Geof says, “You’ll be your usual self production of Brecht is as far away as ever. again soon”, Jo, suddenly, surprisingly, answers, “And what is my usual self? My usual self is a very unusual self, As our film-makers agonisingly struggle to catch up with the It is not because they have started with an existentialist Geoffrey Ingram, and don’t you forget it. I’m an extra­ French pre-war cinema - atmospheric evocations of docks philosophy that the films of Godard and Truffaut are ordinary person. There’s only one of me like there’s only and stations - a young French film-maker has suddenly exciting, but because they have gone out with passion and one of you.” offered us a work that is closer, in style, to a Delaney play excitement and a determination to put that excitement on the than anything made in this country. I am referring to screen. They are constantly reacting with delight to some­ It is a moment of casual illumination, but Richardson shoots Jean-Luc Godard, whose Breathless has recently caused such thing just discovered, and the result is a freshness that makes it with Jo leaning in the shadow against the side of a pictur­ heart-searching in Sight and Sound. our own avant-garde look tired and middle-aged. esque black arch, and he underlines the “dramatic” change of mood by having Jo run out of the shadow, up a slope, turn Breathless opens with a sequence in which a man steals a Two years ago, Gavin Lambert wrote, also in Sight and facing the camera and cry, “My usual self is . . . .” car. He drives it very fast through open country, enjoying Sound, of “a murderous creative passion.” “The best artists (From shade into light! Here as elsewhere Richardson the sheer sensation of speed. He curses other drivers. He in the movies,” he went on, “have always had it; they’ve all accepts running as synonymous with vitality). speaks through the screen to the cinema audience, “If you struggled against producers and censors and sometimes don’t like the town, if you don’t like the country, if you critics for the right to express their own personal vision.” Shelagh Delaney’s refusal to “dramatise” is, though, don’t like the mountains, bugger off.” He feels in the glove nowhere more evident than at the end of her play. Helen tray and happens to find a revolver. Delighted, like a child, It was this “murderous passion” that lay behind Free comes back, Geof goes, and that is all. There is acceptance. he pretends to shoot at things through the windscreen. He Cinema; that drove Osborne, Shelagh Delaney, Arnold By placing the scene against the contrived background of shoots through the open window and a bullet blasts a tree. Wesker and John Arden in their onslaughts on Shaftesbury bonfire night, Richardson falls back on a conventional He discovers he is being chased by cops .... All the Avenue; and that has now pushed directors like Godard “dramatic” effect. His handling of the sequence is even actions are apparently spontaneous, casual, disconnected. towards a new sense of what the cinema can do. more ponderous. Geof stands in the shadows watching the Later, in a long bedroom sequence, he sits up in bed with bonfire. Helen goes for a drink. Jo comes down from the his hat on, a cigarette dangling at the corner of his mouth, flat and goes towards the bonfire. Will they, won’t they ? the sheet round his chin. The film is constantly fresh and And it is with this passion that we must begin if there is to The answer is no. Geof retreats further into the shadows, surprising in a way that Shelagh Delaney’s play was, and be a real revival in our cinema. In the meantime we still and then goes off alone. The camera rests for a time on Jo, Tony Richardson’s film isn’t. have A Taste of Honey. Perhaps it is all we deserve. holding a sparkler. The sequence works well enough on its own level, but it isn't the level that made Shelagh Delaney’s play so new and exciting.

At this point, I want to repeat that A Taste of Honey is an adult film that will probably turn out to be the best produced in a British studio this year. Rita Tushington and Murray Melvin give performances that are very pleasing in their sincerity: and in the scene in which Helen tells Jo that her 8 9