Lunch Hour
(1962/BFI Flipside Region Free/Zero Blu-ray w/Region 2/Two DVD Dual Format
Import Set) + I Was Happy Here (aka Time Lost & Time Remembered/1966) +
Miranda (1948) + Tiara Tahiti (1962/VCI DVDs)
Picture: B-/C+/C/C Sound: B-/C+/C/C Extras: B/D/D/C- Films: B-/B-/C+/C+
PLEASE NOTE: Lunch Hour is a Region Free import Blu-ray that can be ordered
directly from our friends at BFI at the link at the end of this review and will
play on all players worldwide.
And now
for four more films from Britain
that are all worth seeing…
James
Hill is yet another one of the great gentleman journeyman filmmakers whose work
you may have seen, but did not know it.
His feature films include Born
Free, Captain Nemo & The
Underwater City, The Many From O.R.G.Y.
and 1965 Sherlock Holmes film A Study In
Terror. He also worked extensively
on TV on series like The Persuaders!,
The Saint, Dick Barton: Special Agent and key episodes of The Avengers, so much so that he even helmed a few New Avengers.
However,
he made his name on short films and made other films on top of all that,
including a very well made film version of Lunch
Hour (1962), based on the play by John Mortimer. This new BFI Dual Format Blu-ray/DVD release
(both discs are included) is yet another great installment in their terrific Flipside
series. This is a series of great
independently made dramas that deserve revival and re-release, but might not
otherwise get it. Three of Hill’s key
short film works are also included in High Definition, but more on that in a
minute.
Shirley
Anne Field (Peeping Tom, Alfie) is an illustrator at a factory
where she starts to have an affair with an older man (Robert Stephens) who
works there and they seem to be in love with each other, but he is married and
at first, the affair works. However, he
also has children and complications ensure.
Though we have seen plenty of stories like this, this one is different
in that it is believable, does not celebrate the infidelity like many a Hollywood production does and is as much a character
study as anything. It also makes great
use of its locales and all the actors are totally convincing. I actually saw this one a very long time ago
and was pleasantly surprised how well it held up. Kay Walsh (a Hill regular) and Nigel Davenport
also star.
Hill
reminds me of John Llewelyn Moxey in the smoothness and ease in which the
directing just starts, happens, never stops and makes for great filmmaking
where the actors are always on the same frequency with their surroundings. You might be able to say that about any film
that you think really works, but Hill has also achieved this on TV and in his
short films, three of which are included here.
Funded by
British Petroleum, each film became a hit in its own right and even won awards.
Skyhook
(1958, 17 minutes) shows the company in another country getting things done in
the best way possible with teamwork and productivity leading to progress that
“benefits all”, while Giuseppina
(1959, 32 minutes) actually won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short
Subject in a tale of how the title character is brought to the world at large
more easily thanks to her connection to a BP station she lives at that her
father owns. It might not sound like it
would work, but Hill makes it charming. The Home-Made Car (1963, 28 minutes)
has a man rebuilding a car in a comedy that will remind some of the work of
Jacques Tati. He took three films that
could have been industrial bores and made them into fine cinematic exercises.
The 1080p
1.66 X 1 black and white digital High Definition image transfer on Lunch shows some fine depth and offers
solid Video Black, as well as decent detail (despite the grain) and the fine
grain print used is in amazing shape.
The three shorts are here in 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition
presentations that all impress. Skyhook was EastmanColor and the others
three-strip, dye-transfer Technicolor, all looking remarkably good and
sometimes stunning with demo shots throughout.
Turns out the films had a second life on TV broadcast constantly (along
with some other colorful (or colourful) films as test footage for people to
adjust their U.K. PAL format TVs to, especially engineers, so they have had a
very long life and are short film classics for several reasons, now ironic ones
considering the recent BP disaster, but the films still hold up even in the
face of the great Gulf Oil Spill. All
films are presented with PCM 2.0 48/24 Mono sound.
Other
extras besides the shorts include the PAL Region 2 DVD of Lunch and yet another rich, informative booklet that covers Lunch and the three shorts very
thoroughly, including tech information and great essays (read them after seeing
the films) by Sue Harper and James Piers Taylor. BFI has made this into yet another gem of a
release and one all film fans should get their hands on.
VCI
continues to issue key British films on DVD in the U.S., including Desmond
Davis’ I Was Happy Here (1966) with
Sarah Miles (Blow-Up, Ryan’s Daughter) as a married woman who
goes back to her home of Ireland after five years in Britain to see a former
love named Colin (Sean Caffrey) much to the unhappiness of husband Matthew (the
great Julian Glover) who is a doctor who does not understand what is
happening. Done in both the French New
Wave style and having the look of the British Angry Young man cycle, this is a
surprisingly good, well made, nicely shot (by Director of Photography Manny
Wynn), well acted film that is also a character study and fully
believable. There are no extras, but
this deserves more than a basic DVD.
The
underrated Ken Annakin (Battle Of The
Bulge, Those Magnificent Men In
Their Flying Machines, Those Daring
Young Men In Their Jaunty Jalopies) early on directed Miranda (1948), in which a man (Griffith Jones) meets and falls in
love with a mermaid (Glynis Johns). Yes,
this is the forerunner of the Tom Hanks/Daryl Hannah hit Splash directed by Ron Howard, but this is a richly British film
whether it is comical or not. This
amusing film has aged, but is worth a look and a little more ambitious that its
hit imitator. The supporting cast
includes Margaret Rutherford and Maurice Denham. There are no extras.
Finally
we have Ted Kotcheff’s light comedy Tiara
Tahiti (1962) with James Mason and John Mills as rivals who butt heads
again in the beautiful title locale in a military situation that reveals a
darker one for one of the rivals. The
politically incorrect film on the list, Herbert Lom shows up as an Asian
stereotype, we get plenty of sexy island women headed up by Rosenda Monteros as
Belle Annie, has an amusing subplot about a would-be bodybuilder, is nicely
shot in EastmanColor by Otto Heller and also has a strong supporting cast
including Roy Kinnear, Jacques Martin, Peter Barkworth and Gary Cockrell. It can be uneven, but has enough highlights
to give it a look. Extras include a
trailer and alternate day-for-night bikini scene.
The 1.33
X 1 image in all the films (save the anamorphically enhanced 1.66 X 1 on Tahiti) can be
softer than I would have liked, but Happy
tends to be sharper and clearer overall.
All have Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono and again Happy sounds better than the other films. I can understand Miranda sounding dated, but why is Tahiti
having more problems than it should?
Maybe it needs a little more restoration.
To order Lunch Hour, here is the link:
http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_19037.html
- Nicholas Sheffo
