One of the less well-remembered Powell/Pressburger films, this is a riveting wartime drama. Gimpy bomb disposal expert David Farrar, in the role that should have made him a major star, struggles with his own alcoholism and a new, deadly species of German infernal device. Powell goes in for some noir-like Expressionist effects as Farrar is menaced by a giant-sized liquor bottle but switches into semi-documentary mode for the almost unbearable suspense final€ as our hero edges along the shingle beach to peer into the guts of an unstable bomb. With sterling support from Kathleen Byron as the love interest and Michael Gough and Jack Hawkins as stiff-upper lip officers who get trembly when the time comes to cut the wires. Forget Speed, this is the great Bomb Disposal movie.
The Small Back Room is an anguished dark masterpiece and certainly one of the most important British films of the century.
After the lavish Technicolor spectacle of The Red Shoes, British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger retreated into the inward, shadowy recesses of this moody, crackling character study. Based on the acclaimed novel by Nigel Balchin, The Small Back Room details the professional and personal travails of troubled, alcoholic research scientist and military bomb-disposal expert Sammy Rice (David Farrar), who, while struggling with a complex relationship with secretary girlfriend Susan (Kathleen Byron), is hired by the government to advise on a dangerous new German weapon. Deftly mixing suspense and romance, The Small Back Room is an atmospheric, post–World War II gem.
In this change of pace after The Red Shoes (1948), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger examined the bureaucratic and personal frustrations of a crippled munitions expert during World War II. Powell's gritty black-and-white realism is tinged with expressionistic flourishes, particularly in a fantasy about a menacing whiskey bottle that reveals the alcoholic Sammy's distress as he grapples with feelings of inadequacy and reservations about romantic bonds. His chance to dismantle a new kind of explosive becomes his possible redemption; the 17-minute sequence of his painstaking efforts to defuse a bomb precariously embedded in a pebbly Dorset beach is a triumph of visual story-telling and excruciating susp
