Lunch Hour
1962 British film by James Hill / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Lunch Hour is a 1962 British romantic comedy drama film directed by James Hill and starring Shirley Anne Field, Robert Stephens and Kay Walsh.[2] Based on the 1960 one-act play of the same name by John Mortimer, it is about a man and a woman who attempt to conduct their affair during their lunch hour, but are continually interrupted.
| Lunch Hour | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Opening titles | |
| Directed by | James Hill |
| Written by | John Mortimer |
| Based on | the play by John Mortimer |
| Produced by | John Mortimer Harold Orton |
| Starring | Shirley Anne Field Robert Stephens Kay Walsh |
| Cinematography | Wolfgang Suschitzky |
| Edited by | Ted Hooker |
| Music by | James Hill Ian Orton |
Production company | Eyeline Productions |
| Distributed by | Bryanston Films (UK) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 64 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £22,750[1] |
A recently graduated art school designer at a wallpaper manufacturing company catches the eye of a married middle manager. They begin a workplace affair during their lunchtime breaks but their attempts to find privacy are continually thwarted.
The man eventually locates a small hotel where he books a room for just one hour, but feels the need to invent a hugely-complicated tale to tell the hotel manageress about a troubled marriage and a wife travelling down from Scarborough for a heart-to-heart.
The still-suspicious hotel manageress continually interrupts the couple and, as the man tells the story to his would-be lover, she starts to believe the whole fantasy. She sees herself as the stay-at-home wife, ironing the man's shirts and starts to have sympathy with the wife. The couple argue over the woman's imagined life, and as their hour in the hotel is up, their affair ends and they return separately to their work roles. There, the man appears sullen and unhappy, while the woman smiles quietly to herself as she works.
- Shirley Anne Field as girl
- Robert Stephens as man
- Kay Walsh as manageress
- Hazel Hughes as auntie
- Michael Robbins as Harris
- Nigel Davenport as personnel manager
- Neil Culleton as little boy
- Sandra Leo as little girl
- Peter Ashmore as lecturer
- Vi Stevens as waitress
The play was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 11 July 1960, with Stephen Murray and Wendy Craig.[3]
It debuted on stage in 1961 as part of a triple bill, alongside A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter and The Form by N.F. Simpson[4][5] and was well received.[6]: 153 The cast comprised Emlyn Williams and Wendy Craig with whom Mortimer had an affair and conceived a son.[7] "It was the Sixties and we were all a lot more excitable then," said Mortimer.[8] According to Mortimer's biographer Valerie Grove, his affair with Craig during the production of his play The Wrong Side of the Park may have inspired the writing of Lunch Hour.[6]
Mortimer wrote a TV adaptation of the play, Kings Cross Lunch Hour, which was broadcast on 29 May 1972 as part of BBC Two's Thirty Minute Theatre series, with Joss Ackland and Pauline Collins.[9]
The film was shot at Marylebone Studios in London, a church near Baker Street.[6]: 177–178
Maggie Smith was considered for the female lead but the role ended up going to Shirley Ann Field who was given 7% of the profits.[6]: 170
Field said "we did it, as you can guess, on a shoestring ... and we all worked on a percentage of what the picture will make. The point is, we all felt that it had something important to say about the rootlessness and confusion that face young people in England today since they literally have no place to go and be alone except on lunch hour. We think it's bigger than it sounds in this kind of explanation".[10]
Field described it as perhaps "the most enjoyable film I'd ever done" because the cast and crew all worked so closely together.[11]
Critical response
Sight and Sound wrote: "John Mortimer's almost-adulterous drama about an illicit rendezvous between nervous London co-workers is a sharp-eyed snapshot of a society still mired in post-war prudishness but on the brink of swinging. ... Cosy rather than cutting but with a strong whiff of cultural change ... its zesty exploration of empowering female frustration makes it a thought-provoking addition to the lad-centric catalogue of early 1960s British cinema".[12]
Time Out wrote that the film: "is redolent of the early '60s (post-Austerity, pre-Swinging), from its Theatre of the Absurd affectations to the way it manages to be simultaneously liberating and oppressive."[13]
The British Film Institute describe the film as "a truly visual adaptation of the original radio play, with back stories and a number of exterior scenes added – although the climactic hotel encounter remains suitably shuttered and claustrophobic. The film never achieved a major release, perhaps because of its short length or because its absurdist influences invited classification alongside European art-house cinema."[14]
In his obituary of Field for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw called the film: "her 60s masterpiece", writing "Field is excellent: smart, seductive, but sweetly vulnerable and yet determined. Lunch Hour has all the New Wave preoccupations with class and pre-Pill sexual morality of the time, but unlike Alfie or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning it gives Field something substantial to do."
Home media
The film was released on DVD in 2011 via the BFI Flipside label,[15] and also by Renown Pictures.[16]
- Petrie, Duncan James (2017). "Bryanston Films : An Experiment in Cooperative Independent Production and Distribution" (PDF). Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: 7. ISSN 1465-3451.
- "Lunch Hour". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 4 January 2024.
- "Lunch Hour". BBC Programme Index. Retrieved 9 January 2024.
- Things to Come, The Observer 1 Jan 1961: 18.
- Slight Ache, A, New Statesman; London Vol. 61, (Jan 6, 1961): 152.
- Grove, Valerie (2008). A voyage round John Mortimer. Viking. p. 148. ISBN 978-0670018802.
- More than forty years on, Sir John Mortimer discovers he has a son to actress Wendy Craig. Bunting, Chris. The Independent; London, 13 Sep 2004: 14.
- "Thirty-Minute Theatre: Kings Cross Lunch Hour". BBC Programme Index. Retrieved 9 January 2024.
- View from a local vantage point, A.H. Weiler. New York Times. 4 Nov 1962: X9.
- "BBC Radio 4, The Film Programme, interview with Shirley Ann Field". BBC iPlayer. 15 April 2011. Archived from the original on 21 April 2011. Retrieved 9 January 2024.
- Stables, Kate (June 2011). "Lunch Hour". Sight and Sound. 21 (6): 89. ProQuest 881967230 – via ProQuest.
- "Lunch Hour". Time Out. 10 September 2012. Retrieved 9 January 2024.
- "Lunch Hour". BFI. Retrieved 9 January 2024.
- Cinema Retro 5 July 2011 accessed 19 March 2013
- "Lunch Hour". Renown Films. Retrieved 9 January 2024.
- Lunch Hour at IMDb
- Lunch Hour at Letterbox DVD
- Lunch Hour then-and-now location photographs at ReelStreets
- Critical essay about Lunch Hour at Cathode Ray Tube
- Lunch Hour on BFI Player
