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.

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.

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.

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.