Lunch-Hour

Matthew Nathan | 1933 | 4 mins (extract)

Lunch-Hour offers us a kaleidoscopic snapshot of the City of London enjoying its lunchtime break. We see the clocks strike 1pm and suddenly the streets come alive with the workers' eateries of choice ranging from Oyster bars, restaurants, a café scarily called Dive and outdoor snack shacks. It's the impression given of the Square Mile's social structure that most intrigues - the film's top hats, bowlers, homburgs, trilbies and caps (and police helmets) signify the different social classes of their wearers. Each class of worker patronises a different class of eating establishment. Workers flock to Tower Hill which seems to have been the Speakers' Corner of its day, to listen to enthusiastic orators.

Lunch-Hour was shot by an amateur maker of mini-documentaries (as opposed to family home movies). A professional film crew could have made a more technically perfect film, but not a more vibrant one.