A Taste of Honey

A perfect example of how the 'New British Cinema' of the late '50s and early '60s has dated and become almost unwatchable. Richardson's version of Shelagh Delaney's play about a Salford girl getting pregnant after leaving home highlights the style's many faults: kitchen sink realism, when pursued as an end in itself, can be as tedious and unrevealing as an uninspired episode of Coronation Street. It's all very well dwelling on grimy streets, factory chimneys, sluttish individuals, and so on, but with no real attempt to place characters in an explicit social or political context, the story becomes reduced to a drab, voyeuristic celebration of ordinariness and poverty. There's no anger, no joy, and ultimately no insight in this film; its shallow reliance on clichés reeks of complacency.