The Small Back Room (1952)

Another great Powell and Pressburger film

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

The Small Back Room is a film directed by the well known team, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The film is about a British bomb defuser and scientist during World War II. He is hired by the British government to help diffuse German bombs that have been showing up on the beaches. He is having trouble with his girlfriend due to his drinking problem and it is affecting his work. This is all I want to say without spoiling the plot.

The special features are audio dictations by Michael Powell for his autobiography, an interview with the film's cinematographer and audio commentary by film scholar, Charles Barr.

This is a great film and the scenes of the bombs being diffused will have you on the edge of your seat. October 5, 2008

Powell and Pressburger, returning to their roots.

It was a surprise for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger to follow up the Technicolor extravaganzas of "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes" with a throwback to their earlier work--the black-and-white, tightly focused World War II drama "The Small Back Room." Perhaps the film served as sort of a palate cleanser before they moved on to "The Tales of Hoffmann," a film so rococo that it made "The Red Shoes" look modest. However, "The Small Back Room" is still a riveting, superbly made, character-driven thriller that is worth anyone's time.

Set in the early spring of 1943, the film tells the story of Sammy Rice, a bomb expert sinking into drink and despair after a failed effort to defuse a bomb caused one of his feet to be blown off, leaving him in constant agony. In his depression, Sammy is allowing the political players in his government department (led by a smarmy Jack Hawkins) to walk all over him, to the sorrow and anger of Susan, Sammy's secretary and live-in girlfriend. Whether Sammy can sufficiently regain his confidence to save his job and his relationship with Susan is the crux of the story, which ends with a palm-sweatingly suspenseful sequence involving a German UXB on an English beach.

Powell and Pressburger brought virtually the entire crew from "The Red Shoes" over to "The Small Back Room," including production designer Hein Heckroth and composer Brian Easdale, and their artistry pays off. So does the artistry of Christopher Challis--a camera operator on "The Red Shoes," promoted to director of photography here--who provides B&W photography of uncommon clarity, depth and beauty. Above all, "The Small Back Room" is a wonderful showcase for the talents of David Farrar and Kathleen Byron, who were brilliant in "Black Narcissus" and equally fine here. Farrar's moody, bitter Sammy isn't all that different from "Black Narcissus's" Mr. Dean, but Byron's sane, kind-hearted Susan is a 180-degree turn from the crazed Sister Ruth of "Black Narcissus." The brilliance and variety that Byron demonstrated in these two roles makes it all the more tragic that she never achieved true stardom, as she deserved to do. But at least audiences will always have her performances in "Black Narcissus" and "The Small Back Room" as testimony to her radiant screen presence. September 1, 2008

The Archers in decline, but still a film worth watching

Sammy Rice (David Farrar) is a first-rate scientist and something of an expert in defusing bombs. The year is 1943 and the Germans have starting dropping a new kind of terror weapon on Britain. It's something small, evidently attractive to children, and explodes either when it's picked up or just touched. No one is sure because the three children and one adult who did touch the things were killed. Rice is asked to investigate by the Army. He says he has to have an unexploded device to work on; that he'll come as soon as the Army calls him. Rice, it happens, has also lost his foot and wears a metal one. He suffers pain from it and is well into a self-pitying meltdown fueled by alcohol. Susan (Kathleen Byron), the woman who loves him, understands what he's going through but sooner or later will have enough of his self-involvement. "Sue, you'd have such a good life without me," he tells her in a nightclub. "I take things from you with both hands. I always have. I always will."

Sammy Rice has to deal with his self-imposed isolation, his drinking and his unwillingness to face up to the fact that he has an artificial foot. Through all this, the group of scientists and managers Rice works with has come up with an anti-tank gun some feel is ready to sell to the government. He doesn't, but he's not willing to go against the consensus. Then, deep in an alcoholic haze, he gets the phone call. Two devices have been discovered. One is now being worked on by the Army captain who first asked him to help. It probably goes without saying that soon there is no Army captain and only one remaining device. Rice leaves for the English coast where the device is half buried in the sand. What he does with it will determine not only his life, but will affect his whole outlook on himself, his worth and his willingness to accept responsibility.

Sound a little...well, too much? The Small Back Room features some very good acting, excellent dialogue, one of Michael Powell's quirky internal surrealistic scenes (as Rice fights his compulsion to have a drink) and an extremely well-handled and tense final twenty-five minutes as Rice works to defuse the bomb. On the whole, though, it seems to me that Powell and Pressburger, after such a run of great movies they created in the Forties, used The Small Back Room as a way to step back and let out a long breath. The movie is by no means a let-down, but the sulky self-pity of Sammy Rice leaves little room for us to get willingly involved with him. This is a problem because the movie, despite an exciting premise with the new-type of German bomb and the excitement of the last third of the film, is essentially a character study in Rice's self-pity. Sammy Rice starts out gloomy and unhappy, and he stays that way throughout the movie until he walks across the sand to see if he can defuse the bomb. Powell and Pressburger's subversive humor (a dolt of a governmental minister, a glad-handing arms manager) is amusing but we still wind up with Rice feeling sorry for himself.

I think it's fair to say that The Small Back Room marks the coming decline of Powell and Pressburger. The Tales of Hoffmann was still to be made, but with that exception every movie following The Small Back Room marked a decline in the kind of original, unusual cinematic storytelling that was the hallmark of The Archers. They had to deal with studio moneymen who gradually assumed control over the freedom that they had enjoyed with J. Arthur Rank and Alexander Korda. They, especially Powell, found it increasingly difficult to find subject matter that excited them. At one point, four years elapsed before they took on a new project. The Archers last movie turned out to be something Powell swore he'd never make after all those Quota Quickies in the Thirties, a programmer. They drifted apart, still friends, and went their own ways.

For those who admire Powell and Pressburger, The Small Back Room is well worth having. In addition to Farrar and Byron, both of whom were in Black Narcissus, there are a number of fine actors to enjoy, such as Jack Hawkins, Cyril Cusack, Sid James, Leslie Banks, Michael Gough, Robert Morley and Renee Asherson.

This Criterion release has an excellent DVD transfer. I only sampled the extras, which include a booklet essay, a commentary, a video interview with Christopher Challis who worked with Powell and Pressburger on several of their movies, and an audio excerpt of Powell's dictations for his autobiography. If you haven't bought the two volumes yet, I think you'll find A Life in Movies: An Autobiography and Million Dollar Movie great reading.

Thank goodness for DVD and for Criterion. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are no more, but we have their greatest films still with us. Says Challis, "It was a great team and I'm terribly sorry it packed up." June 25, 2008

Offbeat gem

Far from being an indicator of the decline of the creative genius of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, The Small Back Room harkens back to the pair's earlier black-and-white period and is an offbeat gem. David Farrar shines as Sammy Rice, a bitter yet sensitive man unsure if he has enough character to accept the things he must and the strength to change what he can in his life. Kathleen Byron (who appeared with Farrar in P&P's Black Narcissus in 1947) plays Susan, a shrewd, strong woman nevertheless deeply in love with a flawed, perhaps failure of a man. Their relationship, suprisingly and refreshingly adult in a period still wrapped in censorship restrictions, is the core of the film as Sammy battles his inner demons and those at his government job as one of the nameless, faceless experts in the "small back room." Full of wonderful character support (Jack Hawkins, Cyril Cusack and a hilarious cameo by Robert Moreley as a vapid government minister) and the famed Powell and Pressburger puckish humor and bursts of fantasy, this is a treat on all fronts. Beware the American released shorter version (UK release is 103 minutes). July 15, 2007

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