Lunch Hour

Robert Stephens was a fine actor who sadly ruined his looks life and career through heavy drinking.I remember seeing him with Maggie Smith in Private Lives.Here he excels as the carrier's husband looking for a fling with a young designer played by a vivacious Sally Anne Field.The first half of the film is much better than the second half,if anything it becomes unbearably pretentious.Filmed at Marylebone studios that there are lots of scenes shot in the area.However I found the most nostalgic scene to be in the cinema where the beam from the projector shines through the smoke with the audience puffing away.I remember it well.

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.

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.

The distinguished writer John Mortimer concocted this very, very British romantic drama, a bittersweet tale of what was later known as a "nooner" - clandestine sexual tryst during one's lunch hour away from work. Casting international stars Shirley Ann Field and Robert Stephens results in a classic.

Director James Hill (who directed Mortimer's Peter Sellers comedy "Trial and Error" and later hit paydirt with "Born Free') adopts a deceptively minimalist style that pinpoints the most wonderful little details of the story, many quite memorable incidents. There's the couple attending an Itaiain movie, we only hear the exaggerated, loud Italian dialogue while Stephens only wants to neck (not looking at the picture at all); Kay Walsh scene stealing to her heart's content as manageress of a hotel where Stephens has booked a room for an hour only; a fantasy scene with Auntie (a terrific turn by Hazel Hughes as a meanie); and a cameo by Nigel Davenport as the personnel office's fussy (and perhaps lascivious) man fawning a bit over new employee Shirley.

Right from the abstract opening sequence of railroad tracks crossing in patterns, Hill conjures up some amazing fantasy counterpoint to the realistic events of meeting and getting to know each other, before the romance goes completely off the tracks. Robert's tall tales get him into trouble and we get to see a fantasy world (realistically shot, however) of Shirley becoming his oppressed wife with two kids, all foisted on her by his quite chauvinist imagination.

Unlike the often American-financed and so successful British pictures of this period, this barely hour-long feature was never released in America , and stands for me alongside "Four in the Morning" and other local classics to be appreciated as an outgrowth of the '50s Anderson/Reisz sort of free cinema, not aping the output of Continental Europe or the U. S.

Lunch Hour is an early '60s hidden British gem; an overlooked work of cinematic art.

This phenomenal piece of British cinematic art is like a time-capsule of the pre-swinging London early 1960s, and shoots straight to the top of one of my all-time favourite motion pictures, without thinking too deeply, up there with the likes of Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and Persona.

The cinematography not only captures London superbly, but the lighting reflects Shirley Anne Field's every nuance and inner emotion perfectly. Her performance is sensitive and sensual. Apparently, she really enjoyed making this piece, with a small and tight-knit crew getting it in the can in just 4 weeks. In the movie, the "man", played by Robert Stephens asks her how old she is (after being promoted by Shirley, who is simply "girl"), and she replies that she's 24 - which was her real age as it happened. Not a coincidence, really, because the entire film and script fits the players like a glove.

This is New Wave British cinema at its best, with restrained, unobtrusive camera work which just always seems to capture the action flawlessly in frame - in this respect, equalling the best of European cinema. Without going back and analysing every shot, I don't recall a single zoom shot - thank goodness.

What I don't understand is how Talking Pictures TV and non-other than the BFI list the picture as a comedy. It's first rate drama that probes the usually hidden and dark inner workings of relationships, yes, peppered with comedic elements for sure - just like as in real life. But the film is saying something timeless and the direction never plays just for laughs, and is a profound social document of the early 1960s, avoiding the typical British "beat generation" cliches and prefiguring the hippy generation. It's hard to release that Beatlemania was still off in the future when the film was being made, and were still under contract playing in Hamburg.

Having scanned through some reviews here on IMDb and print reviews, I'm amazed that some feel it is "very dated" and there is a lot of ambivalence toward the plot twist that reveals itself in the second half. Maybe it's because a younger generation find it impossible to identify with British life in the 1950s and '60s. That is not the fault of the film, but it may indicate that today's youth are more out of touch with the past than might be imagined.

Of course with a run-time of just over 60 minutes, it had general release challenges. It's not a B picture, and to bill it as such is to sideline the massive artistic talent that comes alive on screen. It has it's place in art-house cinemas, and I'm going to wild-guess that it was shown a the Curzon when first released.

It is interesting to compare "Interlude", a main stream 1968 British film with an almost identical plot line to "Lunch Hour". Oh boy, what a lot can happen in the six year interval between the two (unrelated) films and society in general! Despite garnering a BAFTA award and featuring Oskar Werner in the male lead, (who ironically appeared in Truaffaut's French New Wave, "Jules et Jim"), "Interlude" falls down heavily and is stylistically quite dated in comparison to this much overlooked black and white early '60s hidden British gem, "Lunch Hour", which still has a fresh crispness that I believe future generations will learn to appreciate and value. Truly, an overlooked work of cinematic art.

Rating: 10/10 John E. Ruffle, January 14, 2019. 585 words.