Lunch Hour

Shirley Anne Field paints the designs for wallpaper. Robert Stephens is an executive at the company where she works. They fall in love, but between their jobs and their commutes to their homes, they have no opportunity to consummate their feelings.

It's based on a radio play by John Mortimer. Director James Hill opens it up with long, contemplative shots of where they work, where they lunch, on the street. Because of the source, there still is an enormous amount of talk, particularly in the climactic scene where they rent a room for an hour from hotelier Kay Walsh, and discuss the elaborate story Stephens has constructed to justify their short rendez-vous. As a movie it is charming but slight.

Married Stephens fancies Field; can't keep his hands off her. With their trysts constantly blocked, he books a b&b in desperation.

Thing is, the yarns he contrives to fool the priggish early-60's types he meets on his odyssey to highly anticipated conquest are so fancy, she embroils herself in them.

Is she mad, or vigorously enjoying avoiding doing the deed ?

Being British, 'LH' stays relatively conservative, never veering into overblown 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof' territory.

And again, being British, it's way ahead of the blunt U. S. in terms of feminism. There is no 'man holds all the cards until plucky woman finally trumps his hand' to be drudged through here . . she holds them all from the start !

From the days when seeing just one movie at the cinema was unthinkable, 'Lunch Hour' was presumably shot as a support feature - but written by John Mortimer and directed by James Hill, even a 'short' will have charm and intelligence if nothing else.

Field - captured by Wolfgang Suschitsky in soft, reverent b&w - is a jubilation. You can't blame Stephens for a second, but common sense should urge him think twice when secluded treasure shines as luminously as Shirley Anne.

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.

Shirley Anne Field is a young girl who gradually falls for her factory boss Robert Stephens - neither character are actually given names here! Their meetings are initially restricted to park chats or a visit to the tea room, which become gradually more frustrating as both wish to take their relationship to the next level. To that end he decides to procure an hotel room - and spins some fanciful yarns to the landlady along the way. What makes this otherwise rather procedural melodrama interesting is that the latter stages of the story increasingly see the young woman enter the realms of her imagination. What develops now for her is a family scenario with domestic bliss turning to domestic discord that though potent in it's intention is a little implausible. Not because she clearly has some form of schizophrenia, but because the man appears oblivious or uncaring to it - and that doesn't really sit with the basic premiss of the film, nor of their affection for each other. Their afternoon trysts would have surely demonstrated to him that she was ill and yet her fantasies proceed largely unfettered. There is, however, a strong dynamic between these two actors and peppered with only a few brief appearances from Kay Walsh running her den of iniquity, it is a strongly written and well presented two-hander that does offer food for thought.

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.