Lunch Hour

Following from director James Hill's adaptation of Arnold Wesker's 'The Kitchen' 'Lunch Hour' was the second of two screen versions he then made of works by John Mortimer.

Originally based like his previous 'The Dock Brief' on a television play it manages to combine elements both of Francois Truffaut's comedy of bourgeois adultery 'La Peau Douce' and the scene in 'Duck Soup' in which Groucho Marx comes to blows with a foreign ambassador for a slight he hadn't even yet had time to deliver.

As in 'La Peau Douce' it depicts the trials of an illicit relationship rather than the pleasure to which the harassed expression worn throughout by a young Robert Stephens attests.

This is the sort of charming little film about the innocence of young love that couldn't be made today without copious love scenes to lure the 'punters' in.

It's also the type of film that nobody ever sees unless, like me, you scour the TV listings for obscure items and curios that are normally shown in the early hours of the morning, as this was, when the sort of innocent people that are portrayed in this film (if they still exist) are tucked up in bed and have been asleep for a good few hours.

This is the story of a young man and woman (Robert Stephens and Shirley Anne Field) who meet at the factory where they work and fall in love. Stephens plays an executive which is a job title that clearly flatters his position and Field plays an artist who having recently left art school paints flowers seemingly all day.

The short time they spend alone together is during lunch hours where they are constantly frustrated in their attempts to have a kiss and a cuddle. Stephens' character attempts to solve this problem by booking a hotel room and attempting to avoid suspicion by telling the landlady an assortment of lies. These include Field being his wife who has come down from the North with the kids (who will be looked after by an imaginary aunt) to discuss something very important.

Why he didn't book the same hotel room and use it overnight so they can really get down to the business at hand is never explained.

This is where the film goes really weird and Field's character starts to imagine the whole lie is actually true and visualises having to dealing with noisy crying kids and all the hassle that goes with it. Maybe this is her scary vision of the pressures of marriage and motherhood that will arise if she hangs around this executive chap much longer. Whatever the reason she comes across as an unhinged psycho who Stephens would do well to steer clear of.

It seems such a shame that Field's character goes from a lovely girl with whom any young man would want to spend their lunch hour to a hallucinating crackpot who probably belongs in a straitjacket. Then again you never truly know your beloved until you have spent an hour together in a grubby little hotel room.

Lunch Hour is an early work from writer John Mortimer. It has an interesting pedigree as it started out as a radio play. It then became a film. Then a stage play and later dramatised for television.

It is a quirky piece which does not work. It does have an interesting performance from Shirley Anne Field who shows that she had more than just looks.

Field and Robert Stephens play a couple who work in a factory. She is a new designer, he is an executive.

They start an affair where they meet over their lunch hour. Only to find nowhere that is private for some kissing and canoodling.

He has an idea to rent a hotel room for a bit of nookie. Only to give a convoluted story to the hotel owner, rather than just rent a room for the night and invite his lover over.

When she hears that the story he told was that she was a mother of two. Come over from Scarborough on a train to meet up with her husband. She begins to imagine it.

Marking the beginning the end of their relationship as he too becomes part of this imaginary chain of events.

An interesting look at pre swinging 60s London. It is a strange hybrid of romance, drama and comedy. It just did not entirely work for me.

To be honest, I don't quite know what to make of this. The meaning of the late plot twist I think becomes quite clear in the last scene with the expression on Shirley Anne Field's face. However with a great cast, great direction and photography, I wondered if the story really merits the super treatment granted to it. The scene where male management jostle each other in their anxiety to impress the young women staff (with Nigel Davenport perfect) is as well covered as it is a near-universal phenomenon.

But rather than make it a subject for wit or drama as it might have been on the Continent - and the affair at least satisfactorily consummated, John (of Rumpole fame) Mortimer's intention is obscure. The earlier part has its witty moments and nice little comic cameos but Mortimer seems determined to ensure that nobody, fictional characters or audience alike, derives much joy from the rest of it. The story and screenplay perhaps were more suited to television - the series Tales of Mystery and Imagination for example. Well worth seeing however for a luminous record of a young Shirley Anne Field, the late-great Robert Stephens, other performances and London in 1961. Significant that a film with such good ingredients received not a single award. A shame that nobody got John Mortimer to re-write the script, presumably nobody dared?

Grateful that Talking Pictures screened it.

Bryanston Films were responsible for numerous highly underrated British b-movies of the late 50s/early 60s and this one, at barely an hour in length, is up there with the best. The narrative is simple - a young salesman (Robert Stephens) in a wallpaper manufacturer, trapped in a seemingly loveless marriage, meets and is instantly attracted to a newly employed designer (Shirley-Anne Field) at the works. They want to get to know one another better but privacy is hard to find. So he books a room at a nearby private hotel for an hour one lunchtime....and there the fun (though not the way he intended) begins.

There are two ways of looking at what happens next - either she is, in reality, somewhat unhinged and her subsequent actions are the outpourings of a hysterical individual or, and I prefer this interpretation, she cleverly turns his (white) lies around, deciding that she is worth rather more than the occasional lunch hour fling.

Either way, the conclusion, with him, visibly rattled, returning to his desk whilst she, yards away, continues as nothing has happened is rather chilling.

Field is excellent throughout this film and it's not hard to see why she attracts most every male she encounters in her job. Stephens also excels as the naive, rather gauche individual who, whichever way you look at it, completely misreads the situation.

Definitely worth looking out for with the bonus of some great location shots and a very poignant soundtrack.