2021 Directed by Lisa Hurwitz
The 100-year story of the iconic restaurant chain Horn & Hardart, the inspiration for Starbucks, where generations of Americans ate and drank coffee together at communal tables. From the perspective of former customers, we watch a business climb to its peak success and then grapple with fast food in a forever changed America.
Successful as a glowing love letter to a truly amazing idea but ultimately lacking any objectivity and is more concerned with the fame of the people interviewed than telling a complete story.
There are some really reprehensible moments in this movie! At one point towards the end, the film essentially blames homeless people for being a major part of the chain’s downfall. Earlier on it glosses over a unionization effort in the 40s by having the son of a former top executive at the time (who is a man in his 60s who is dressed like he is about to attend a prep school) say unionizers were violent and failed because the employees were loyal to the company. Hurwitz's apparent…
My grandparents used to talk about eating at the automat. It still seems like an incredibly futuristic place to me, even though they’ve been gone for decades and decades. Seeing the footage and images of the place brought me back to being a kid and listening to their stories, despite the fact that I never actually ate at the automat myself. Can you be nostalgic for a place you never visited?
This movie is clearly not a comprehensive take on its subject, and it glosses over some topics (like the economics that finally brought the company down) that deserve more time and consideration. Still, it does fill you with the same feelings that the talking heads in the film use…
70
The Automat is Lisa Hurwitz’ directorial debut documentary that encompasses the 90 year history of Horn & Hardart’s ‘automatic’ restaurant. The Automat (in New York)/ Horn & Hardart (in Philadelphia) were restaurants that served food in vending machines of a sort. You would walk in, give a woman at the front a dollar in exchange for 20 nickels, and them proceed to go up to a wall and put those nickels into machines to have compartments in the wall open up. Any food from pies to meat to sandwiches would be stored in these compartments.
I had never heard of the automat restaurant concept prior to this documentary so I was surprised with how thoroughly engaging Hurwitz’ direction is for the…
"Life changes, things change, we all get a little older. But the older you get, the more you reflect back on what came in the beginning, the Horn & Hardarts and the automats of the world."
Made with great respect and affection for the topic, first-time director Lisa Hurwitz chronicles the nearly century-long existence of the Horn & Hardart self-service restaurant/cafeteria chain in New York City and Philadelphia in the slight but enjoyable documentary The Automat, currently playing at NYC's Film Forum. From 1902 until when the last location (on 42nd St and Third Ave in Manhattan) closed in 1991, these "automats" revolutionized the way that big city folks enjoyed their noshes, allowing people from all walks of life to pop nickels…
why was the automat documentary essentially an ad for starbucks!!! why did it stop every 30 min to go back to starbucks CEO howard schulz explain that his life’s goal has been to recreate the magic of the automat!
automats are too cool not to sustain interest (i cried! plenty!) but this needed way more elliot gould > colin powell. there’s a lot of shitty anti-union/homeless shit here that goes totally unexamined and is a bummer. that said i could watch hours and hours of Mel brooks and Carl Reiner telling slightly opposing stories about what the best thing was to eat at the Automat.
I’ve noticed this tendency in documentaries lately for documentarians to be fundamentally uninterested in challenging their interview subjects or in exploring interesting avenues that pop up. In this one there’s a really weird anti-union thread that happens from a son of a former executive who spouts the usual anti-labor bullshit when discussing an attempt at unionizing automats in the 30s (“Luckily they decided to stay loyal to the company and not unionize after everything we did for them” which comes right after he says that they had to establish a special fund to help employees who couldn’t pay bills) and the movie doesn’t explore that at all. If I’m remembering correctly, there’s only one actual former employee who is interviewed.…
great topic for a doc (I could listen to Mel Brooks talk about pie forever), but it's a bit clumsy in execution. there's a lack of journalistic integrity at parts that were shocking like when the director doesn't really follow the story of how a union organizing effort in the 1930s failed. also she only interviews the son of an executive who keeps saying how loyal employees were because they were treated well, but then we never get any history from employees. just the people who owned the business and a handful of celebs (including, weirdly, Colin Powell) who loved going there in their youth. the selection of films featuring the automat I felt could have been broader since there…
Growing up in the 80’s, I remember seeing cartoons that featured the Automat style of restaurant, but it never really registered that these places actually existed. I hadn’t thought of these ‘vending machine restaurants’ for over 30 years, but the moment I heard about this documentary, I searched it out. Everything from how the concept arose, to how they worked, to how the business model was unsustainable was fascinating to me.
Obviously the filmmakers were limited by the amount of existing footage there was of these Automats, but one area that I feel was missing here was more understanding of what took place behind the coin operated windows. They do show people filling up the compartments with food, but…
I rate The Automat higher than many in these here parts because I’ve always been fascinated by automats. I first saw one in a comic book when I was a kid and thought that was the grooviest thing I’d ever seen. On my first visit to Manhattan in 1970, I passed a Horn & Hardart and meant to go back but ran out of time. I was surprised to learn from this doc that the last one closed in 1991, but it was at Third Avenue and 42nd Street, a neighborhood I’m not sure I ventured into until I began working nearby in 1996. As an art deco lover to boot, I regret never having gone to one.
Lisa Hurwitz’s doc…
“...a welcoming and warm place in the worst of times.”
A fluffy slice of lemon meringue. Exactly what this type of puff piece nostalgia doc should be: history lesson from experts, pictures from the Automat coffee table book, Mel Brooks talking about pies. Pulls on the heartstrings when you hear about the Automat’s importance to newly arrived immigrants, the poor, and newly working city women. But kind of glosses over the unionization efforts of Automat employees in 1935, which is a shame, because it sounds like a fascinating, violent moment in the franchise’s history.
When I was five, my parents took me on a day trip to New York. We hit all the sights but all I recall is eating a meal at The Automat. It was like a lunch room that was communal (you might have to share a table with strangers) but what fascinated me was knowing there were people behind the mysterious vending slots that were serving home-cooked meals and desserts....it just seemed so futuristic.
This doc does a fine job of telling the story of Messrs. Horne and Hardart who built this business in Philadelphia and New York. There was obvious integrity there even though it was a profit enterprise. The Automats were a fixture until changing demographics (people moving…
The Automat makes appearances in old movies. This doc gives the history of it with interesting interviews. It does seem like a stretch to make a whole documentary about it and some info gets repeated toward the end. However, there are several historians that have devoted their lives to the phenomenon of The Automat.
Vegan alert:
-Creamed spinach
-Macaroni and cheese
-Salisbury steak
-Ham and cheese sandwich
-Milk in coffee
-Eggs, bacon, chicken sandwich
-Frozen bacon and meat shown
Vegan points:
Philadelphia mayor Wilson Goode ate so much meatloaf that he went off meat
Watched on:
HBO Max
