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.

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.

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.

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.