Rent Lunch Hour (1963)

Historic Gem - Lunch Hour review by AJ

When this film was made, it's probable the film makers would never have anticipated this film would be such an historically informative film. The issues portrayed in the film are just as relevant today as they were in 1962. It is a very emancipated film for the female lead character, surprisingly so. It must have been a somewhat daring film to make back in the '60's and probably no-one expected the 1960's to have so much impact on life as we know it today. The film was made at the beginning of the 1960's and offers a glimpse of the 'old values' dwindling and new values coming into being. The film uses clever but simple methods of transporting the viewer into the real and imaginary world the characters create - this kind of film could easily be adapted to theatre and brought into the 21st century, and still carry relevance today.

Eat A Sandwich Instead. - Lunch Hour review by NC

For some reason I was expecting 'Lunch Hour', because of its running time, to be played out in real time. A couple enter a cheap hotel room, just for the duration of their lunch break, and what transpires has more to do with baring souls than flesh.

Perhaps John Mortimer didn't have the skill to make it a two-hander. Whatever the reason, what we are offered to begin with is a series of pretty dull flashbacks to their meeting, and growing affection, culminating in the hotel room. So far, so conventional. From then on, the unconventional kicks in. The man (Robert Stephens) tells the girl (Shirley Anne Field) about the story he has had to fabricate in order to persuade the manageress to rent the room for such a short spell. In the story, the girl is his wife. The story starts to be played out for real, with the girl gradually understanding how it feels to be the wife of a man who has lost interest in her, and gained interest in someone else. it's a good idea, but it needs a better writer than Mortimer, and the flashbacks and the fantasy scenes cause distraction and a disjointed narrative.

Stephens does his best with a plotline which travels here, there and anywhere. But then there is Shirley Anne Field. Frankly, she's hopeless. She's supposed to be a young lady, feeling trepidation at taking a risky step with a married man, a colleague at work to boot. And then, after little more than an instant, she puts herself in the wife's shoes, rather than the bit on the side, and determines that this time the man will not win. Not many actors could pull it off, and Shirley Anne Field is certainly not one of them.

It would be nice to think that this, for all its faults, was an early feminist parable. Misogyny and unwanted catcalls are part and parcel of daily life in the workplace. Unfortunately, confusion reigns here too, as we are treated to scenes of secretaries at their desks, compact mirror in hand (yawn); and even if the girl isn't ready to throw herself at the feet of the bosses who pour any old rubbish in her ear, there are other girls who are.

In effect, a mess. 'Lunch Hour' lasts just an hour, but feels twice as long. There is a wonderful little scene in a cafe, with the waitress stealing the show, which earns the star.

Comedy drama. - Lunch Hour review by Steve

Wandering shaggy dog story adapted on a shoestring from a play by John Mortimer. A young female artist paints flowers for a company which designs wallpaper. She has an affair with an older married manager over many lunch hours. But this being Britain just before the sexual revolution, there is no place for them to get it on.

Eventually he finagles a hotel bed but then things start to get surreal as the lovers get absorbed into the lie made up by the man to secure the room from the buttoned up landlady. It's mainly a two hander with Shirley Anne Field as the amused art school graduate being manoeuvred into sex by a manipulative wage slave, played by Robert Stephens.

Or maybe none of this happened. It's open to interpretation but my view is the whole story is the hallucinatory day dream of the girl to pass the time while she repetitively paints floral patterns, all day, every day. But of course, that didn't happen either because John Mortimer imagined the whole thing, so perhaps the exercise is a reflection on the creative process.

Other readings are possible. It's an absurdist comedy more droll than hilarious, but it does observe the period with a curious eye, before feminism and swinging London. Shirley Anne isn't a great actor but she has a natural cool detachment which suits the role. It's a fragment; an imaginative, entertaining curiosity short enough to watch in a lunch hour.