Jennie Jones is the daughter of a small shopkeeper in a rundown Welsh mining village. Her relationship with her father is not a close one, and he wants her to live with two elderly aunts in Cardiff, a prospect which appals her. After a couple of adventures, Jennie ends up in London, where she is befriended by a kind-hearted barman named Bob Williams. The two begin a romantic relationship, and Jennie moves into his flat. Bob plans to marry her, but the attractive Jennie feels that she could do better than become the wife of a barman. She hopes to get work as a model or actress, and leaves Bob for Karl Denny, a leading film producer.
This is an example of the social realist kitchen sink dramas that were popular in the British cinema during the late fifties and sixties. The phrase "kitchen sink" originated in the visual arts, where it was used to describe the work of painters such as John Bratby, but it was quickly taken up by critics to describe the novels and plays of writers such as John Osborne, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe and Stan Barstow, works which were frequently turned into films. "Bitter Harvest" also has a literary source, although in this case one written more than thirty years before the film was made, Patrick Hamilton's novel "The Siege of Pleasure". Most kitchen sink films had a young man at their centre, but this one, unusually, has a female protagonist. ("A Taste of Honey", based on the play by Shelagh Delaney, is another example).
Some kitchen sink films- "A Taste of Honey", "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "A Kind of Loving", "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner", "Alfie"- have become classics of the British cinema. "Bitter Harvest" has not and remains little known today, and I think that there are reasons for this. The main one has been mentioned by other reviewers, namely that part of the film seems to be missing. As soon as Jennie has left Bob for Denny, the film abruptly ends with a scene in which her body is found in her flat after she has committed suicide. We can infer that her relationship with Denny went badly wrong and that it was this which led her to kill herself, but this is not shown, only implied. The film would have been a lot better if the progress of the Jennie/Denny relationship had actually been shown on screen. These scenes could have acted as an exposé of the dark side of the "Swinging London" of the sixties and made it easier for us to understand Jennie's suicide. I have o idea why the film-makers chose to end the film in the way they did. Perhaps they ran out of money. (Don't laugh. It is said that the previous year another film, the American war movie "Hell Is for Heroes", had been released in an incomplete form for precisely this reason).
None of the cast are particularly well-known today, although Janet Munro probably counted as a star in 1963, having made several films for Disney. (She was to die tragically young at only 38, which may explain why she has largely been forgotten). She is reasonably good in the early scenes in which Jennie is portrayed as a naive and innocent young girl, but is not really convincing in the later scenes when Jennie suddenly becomes hard, brassy and materialistic. She knows that, unlike Bob, Denny does not love her and is only using her for sex, but she is happy to accept this because she thinks that she can use him to realise her ambitions. There is, however, a decent performance from John Stride as the sincere and kindly Bob, and an amusing one from Thora Hird as his old battle-axe of a landlady.
The film was directed by Peter Graham Scott, who on this showing was not in the same class as other kitchen sink directors such as Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson. At times the action seems to drag, whereas at others the camera-work seems unduly hectic. "Bitter Harvest" still occasionally turns up on television, but when it does it reminds us that not every kitchen sink film was a masterpiece. 5/10.
This is an example of the social realist kitchen sink dramas that were popular in the British cinema during the late fifties and sixties. The phrase "kitchen sink" originated in the visual arts, where it was used to describe the work of painters such as John Bratby, but it was quickly taken up by critics to describe the novels and plays of writers such as John Osborne, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe and Stan Barstow, works which were frequently turned into films. "Bitter Harvest" also has a literary source, although in this case one written more than thirty years before the film was made, Patrick Hamilton's novel "The Siege of Pleasure". Most kitchen sink films had a young man at their centre, but this one, unusually, has a female protagonist. ("A Taste of Honey", based on the play by Shelagh Delaney, is another example).
Some kitchen sink films- "A Taste of Honey", "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "A Kind of Loving", "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner", "Alfie"- have become classics of the British cinema. "Bitter Harvest" has not and remains little known today, and I think that there are reasons for this. The main one has been mentioned by other reviewers, namely that part of the film seems to be missing. As soon as Jennie has left Bob for Denny, the film abruptly ends with a scene in which her body is found in her flat after she has committed suicide. We can infer that her relationship with Denny went badly wrong and that it was this which led her to kill herself, but this is not shown, only implied. The film would have been a lot better if the progress of the Jennie/Denny relationship had actually been shown on screen. These scenes could have acted as an exposé of the dark side of the "Swinging London" of the sixties and made it easier for us to understand Jennie's suicide. I have o idea why the film-makers chose to end the film in the way they did. Perhaps they ran out of money. (Don't laugh. It is said that the previous year another film, the American war movie "Hell Is for Heroes", had been released in an incomplete form for precisely this reason).
None of the cast are particularly well-known today, although Janet Munro probably counted as a star in 1963, having made several films for Disney. (She was to die tragically young at only 38, which may explain why she has largely been forgotten). She is reasonably good in the early scenes in which Jennie is portrayed as a naive and innocent young girl, but is not really convincing in the later scenes when Jennie suddenly becomes hard, brassy and materialistic. She knows that, unlike Bob, Denny does not love her and is only using her for sex, but she is happy to accept this because she thinks that she can use him to realise her ambitions. There is, however, a decent performance from John Stride as the sincere and kindly Bob, and an amusing one from Thora Hird as his old battle-axe of a landlady.
The film was directed by Peter Graham Scott, who on this showing was not in the same class as other kitchen sink directors such as Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson. At times the action seems to drag, whereas at others the camera-work seems unduly hectic. "Bitter Harvest" still occasionally turns up on television, but when it does it reminds us that not every kitchen sink film was a masterpiece. 5/10.