Five Minutes from the Station: A very awkward dinner from 1930

If you have fifteen minutes and want to see a total jerk ruin a man's life over a pot roast, this is your movie.

I’d say skip it if you’re looking for something light or if you're currently stressed about your own job review.

It’s a very weird, very short little thing from 1930 that feels like a bad dream recorded on celluloid.

Berton Churchill plays the boss, Mr. Mason, and he has a face like a sour lemon.

You can tell he enjoys being the most powerful person in the room just by the way he sits in the chair.

Bert Adams (played by Lynne Overman) is just so hopeful it actually hurts to watch him.

He brings his boss home for dinner, thinking a nice meal and a nice wife will get him that promotion he wants.

But Mason isn't looking at the food or the decor.

He's looking at Bert’s wife, and he’s looking at the 'vacancy' in the office like it is a weapon to hold over Bert’s head.

The way they all sit around the table is so stiff it makes your own back ache.

It reminds me of those awkward family dinners in Being Respectable, but this is much shorter and much meaner.

The sound is a bit scratchy, which actually makes it feel more tense and uncomfortable.

Every time a fork hits a plate, it sounds like a gunshot in the tiny room.

Sylvia Sidney shows up and she is just a powerhouse even when she is barely doing anything.

Her eyes are huge and she looks like she knows exactly how this is going to end before the soup is even served.

I noticed that the curtains in the background look really cheap and thin.

It makes Bert's desperation feel more real, like he really needs that extra money just to keep the lights on.

The boss keeps making these little comments that aren't quite insults but they aren't nice either.

It’s that classic 'office politics' stuff that hasn't changed at all in a hundred years.

Maby that's why it still feels relevant even though the clothes look like they belong in a museum.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Five Minutes from the Station (1930) through its definitive frames.

The way Mason talks about the promotion makes it sound like he's dangling a carrot over a cliff.

I liked the shot where the camera just lingers on Bert’s face while he realizes he’s completely screwed.

It goes on for a few seconds too long and you can almost see the sweat on his forehead.

It’s much darker than something like Henpecked which at least tries to be funny.

There is no punchline here, just a slow realization that the world is unfair.

I think Elaine S. Carrington, the writer, really must have hated bosses when she wrote this.

Or maby she just liked watching people squirm in their Sunday best.

The movie ends and you kind of just sit there feeling bad for everyone involved in the scene.

Even the house feels small and cramped by the time the credits roll.

It’s not 'cinematic' in the way we think of it today with big sweeping shots.

It feels like a stage play where someone forgot to open the windows and the air got stale.

If you like The Crash, you might see some of the same DNA in how it handles money and status.

But this is much more focused on the cruelty of small moments and quiet words.

The title, Five Minutes from the Station, feels like a promise of escape that never actually happens.

You're stuck in that dining room with them until the bitter end.

It’s a good reminder that dinner with the boss is almost always a terrible idea in any decade.

I’d watch it again just to see Churchill’s facial expressions during the main course.

He does this thing with his eyebrow that is just pure, unadulterated evil.

Overall, it's a grim little slice of life that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but in a good way. 🚂

• The way the husband keeps fidgeting with his tie like it is choking him.
• The boss's hat is way nicer than anything else in the house.
• The silence after the big 'offer' is made is genuinely chilling.
• Sylvia Sidney's hair is basically a character of its own.