The Kitchen (1961 film)

The Kitchen
DVD cover
Directed by	James Hill
Based on	play by Arnold Wesker
Produced by	Sidney Cole
Starring	Carl Möhner Mary Yeomans Brian Phelan Tom Bell Eric Pohlmann
Music by	David Lee
Production company	Eyeline Productions
Distributed by	British Lion Films
Release date	August 1961 (1961-08)
Running time	76 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£27,246[1]

The Kitchen is a 1961 British drama film directed by James Hill and starring Carl Möhner, Mary Yeomans, Brian Phelan, Tom Bell, Eric Pohlmann and James Bolam.^[2][3] The film follows the dozen staff in a restaurant's kitchen during the course of one busy morning.^[4] The script is based on the 1957 stage play of the same name by Arnold Wesker.^[4] It was produced by Sidney Cole for Act Films Ltd.^[5]

It features a musical interlude when all the staff dance to a song: "What's Cookin'" by Adam Faith.

There is no traditional plot. The film looks at the various relationships between different staff members, a large part having immigrated from Continental Europe. The kitchen staff is almost exclusively male and the waiting staff is exclusively female. The presence of one new member of staff allows each person to be introduced in turn. The owner wanders around checking things. The story looks at the workplace stress, unhealthy environment, bickering between staff, petty thievery, and rather excessive drinking of more than one staff member.

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Arnold Wesker's kitchen is the world in microcosm ... It is, of course, a fine playwright's symbol; but the audience might have been left to work it out for themselves, rather than having it thrown at them repeatedly and explicitly. This nervous over-emphasis becomes the film's main characteristic, partly because James Hill, directing his first feature, underlines every point already made verbally. The effect on stage is presumably of work and talk co-existing. But the more obvious realism of the screen splits up these two elements in the play; the dialogue is switched off, as it were, for the lunch-time rush sequence, all close-ups, nervous cutting, and images of hissing, bubbling, unappetising food. The sequence in which the cooks are persuaded to dream, to step outside their world, becomes not poetic but naive – again, we are brought too close to it but not taken into it. Some of the performances (Tom Bell, Brian Phelan, Sean Lynch, Frank Atkinson) have the right authenticity; some, such as Mary Yeomans', are badly under-directed. Altogether this brave A.C.T. Films venture, made with N.F.F.C. backing on a second-feature budget, has overreached itself. The play needs precision treatment, and here everything crude and naive in its writing is made to stand out."^[6]

• The Kitchen at IMDb

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