mark.waltz I certainly can see why some people refer to this movie as a small masterpiece. I did not go into it expecting big things like the previous Powell/Pressburger classics "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes". However, rather than find this to be an interesting psychological drama about one man's battle with alcohol due to pressures in his professional life and a handicap that has obviously made him bitter, I found a rather claustrophobic, talkie drama that for the most part failed to hold my interest and left me scrambling to find my way back when all of a sudden things began to really happen. The sudden appearance of a giant booze bottle overshadowing its leading man (David Farrar) reminded me of things that audiences had already seen on screen in films prior to this: Ray Milland's withdrawal in "The Lost Weekend" and Gregory Peck's nightmares in "Spellbound". Having been bored for 90 minutes when this came up, I found myself chuckling at it. But then it got serious when the film began to deal with Farrar's profession and all the chat that had gone on before: defusing a bomb found on the beach. This comes in the last ten minutes of the film, and is as nail biting as everything else before was sleep inducing. Had the first 75% of the film been more like this and filled with less exposition, I would certainly find it a masterpiece.

Terrell-4 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, uninvolving? 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 exited 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.

alan-morton Quite apart from its wartime themes, this is the best introduction I know to the world of office politics and power broking. Fans of Ricky Gervais are advised to give this little film a viewing. It has enough story lines to keep everyone happy and the cast is mighty fine at playing a variety of individuals. It's hard to think of a better supporting-role performance from Jack Hawkins, and anything with Kathleen Byron in it always has to be watchable.I've only just read the novel of the same name, on which it's based (still in print and available, and strongly recommended by the way). Comparing the two, it's easy to see how so much of the film derives from the novel; but this is far more than a film of the book. Powell and Pressburger have done a superb job of focusing and concentrating the novel's strengths.

jandesimpson As I am sometimes less than kind in my comments of the Archers, it was a pleasure to rediscover the other day "The Small Back Room" , a film I had not seen since its original release. Although this is generally regarded as one of their minor works, presumably because of its lack of flamboyance, it takes for once a very serious theme and treats it in a thoroughly mature way; that of the psychologically flawed individual and how he reacts when faced with possibly the greatest challenge in his professional career. Two of Sidney Lumet's finest films, "Equus" and "The Verdict" have the same subject. Sammy Rice, the boffin of "The Small Back Room", is struggling with alcoholism and the mental as well as the physical pain of coping with an artificial foot when he is called upon to discover the way to dismantle one of several booby-trap explosive devices dropped by the Germans over Britain in 1943. The casting of the two central characters is perfect. Although the part of Sammy calls for someone with a James Mason like authority, a much lesser actor, David Farrar, rises to the occasion particularly as he has the advantage of a large lumbering frame that conveys a certain physical awkwardness. As his sympathetic ladyfriend, Susan, Kathleen Byron drops her "Black Narcissus" melodramatics to give the performance of her lifetime as the woman who really knows how to handle Sammy when he is at his lowest. Add to this the fine camerawork of Christopther Challis, particularly liberal in its use of huge closeups that significantly heighten the psychological tension of the narrative, and you have a film well worthy of attention. In only two scenes does it falter. Unfortunately by conforming to the tiresome custom of British films of the period of sending up the Establishment, it presents Robert Morley as a rather silly senior minister. Although this would have probably fitted in the context of a comedy it is out of place in a film as darkly toned as this. Then there is the melodramatic lapse of resorting to Teutonic Expressionism when Sammy is fighting his alcoholism. In this nightmarish sequence he is physically dwarfed by a giant whisky bottle and an alarm clock. This is one of only two scenes to use background music. For the rest, untypically for this period, it does without. It makes for a stronger, more hard-edged experience.