The Small Back Room

Plot synopsis:
Sammy Rice (David Farrar) is a British scientist working with a specialist "back room" team in London during the Second World War. Rice is embittered because he feels military scientific research is being incompetently managed. He is also enduring unremitting pain from his artificial foot. The painkillers he has been prescribed are ineffective, and his use of alcohol as an analgesic has led to his alcoholism. His girlfriend Susan (Kathleen Byron) puts up with his self-pitying, self-destructive behavior as long as she can, but finally breaks up with him, telling him that he lacks the ambition to better himself.
Rice is brought in by Captain Stuart (Michael Gough) to help solve the problem of small booby-trapped explosive devices (mines) being dropped by Nazi bombers, which have killed four people, including three children. They receive some useful information from a critically wounded young soldier (Bryan Forbes in his debut). Two further mines are found at Chesil Beach: they look like common thermos flasks. Stuart is first on the scene but has difficulty getting Rice on the telephone in his flat because Rice is alone following his breakup, angry, drunk and destructive. Rice quickly sobers up, and travels to Chesil Beach only to find that Stuart tried to defuse one of the mines and has been blown up. Rice sets to work on the second mine after listening to the notes Stuart dictated to an ATS corporal (Renée Asherson) during his effort earlier in the day. He discovers that the mine has two booby traps, not one, and manages to defuse them both, after which the engineers steam-out the explosive charge, thereby rendering the mine safe, and intact and suitable for scientific examination, and development of countermeasures ("Rendering Mines Safe", actually a Royal Navy function at that time).
When Rice returns to London, his self-esteem somewhat restored by his success, he is offered an officer commission as of head of the Army's new scientific research unit. He accepts. Susan returns to him and they return to his flat to find Susan has repaired everything he damaged while drunk.

Tags: suspenseful

Review:
The film shines in its production values, photography, art direction, casting but most of all in its details and its capacity to involve the viewer in a subject that would seem almost repellent today, a complicated and imperfect man's devotion to his work in time of war.
Its success is helped by the talent of the principals, a wise woman every warrior would like to return to (Kathleen Byron) and the most gorgeous hunk of uncompromising masculinity ever to grace a British screen and titillate the female viewers, David Farrar..
This film is an interesting return to the general subject matter of Powell and Pressburger's black and white war films (49th Parallel, One of our Aircraft, etc..), but, made four years after the end of the war, it is a moody piece that focuses on a man disabled by the war.
As always, Powell's keen visual sense is paramount to the brilliance of the Archers' films, and the bomb-defusing scene on the beach makes great use of the setting in its compositions and editing.
Although it is not the best introduction to the work of Powell and Pressburger, this film is a keen testament to the capacity of their storytelling abilities in weaving a tale of a man who finds redemption through work and love.
Now possibly one of my favourite films of all time, the very good, simple underlying plot is overtaken by the principal characters, played by David Farrar and Kathleen Byron.
An excellent supporting cast, including Michael Gough, Jack Hawkins and Leslie Banks enables the viewer to pull the curtains on a rainy afternoon and to lose themselves in a world that is not quite the 1943 in which the film is set and in in some ways is much later than the 1949 in which it was made.
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.
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.
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.
The filming has the intense chiaroscuro of monochrome at its best, Kathleen Byron is astonishingly beautiful (even more so than in Black Narcissus), and the undertones are dark and very modern.
The Small Back Room (AKA: Hour of Glory) is directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, with both adapting the screenplay from the Nigel Balchin novel.
It stars David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Jack Hawkins, Leslie Banks and Michael Gough.
Music is by Brian Easdale and cinematography by Christopher Challis.As the Germans drop explosive booby-traps across coastline England, Sammy Rice (Farrar) will be tasked with learning the secret to disarming the deadly devices.
But first he must beat his private battle with alcohol, his form of self medication due to the loss of one of his feet.The Archers produce what is in essence a tale of redemption, it's a superbly mounted drama dripping with realism and infused with atmospheric black and white photography.
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).
This film called THE SMALL BACK ROOM is constantly ignored for some reason , perhaps the fact it's in black and white might have a lot to do with it but is certainly of the best films in Powell's resume Perhaps this fact that it is shot in black and white works in its favour ?
David Farrar plays Sammy Rice a scientist working for the war office and finds himself besieged on all sides by marketing agents who want to win government contracts for new weapons even though these weapons are nowhere near as effective as the marketing men claim .
What the film does brilliantly is taking us in to the tortured psyche of Rice who knows fine well that this will cost the lives of young men who have to fight the war against Nazi Germany with these weapons In film noir the protagonist is portrayed as a flawed anti-hero and in the case of Rice he's flawed both physically and mentally .
The entire film benefits greatly from the cinematography of Christopher Challis that any director of film noir would kill for One other overlooked aspect to THE SMALL BACK ROOM that you would never get in an American movie is the " joint effort " portrayal of the allies .
Believe me you wouldn't get that in a 21st Century American film THE SMALL BACK ROOM remains one of the best films Powell made .
It was one of the best character studies that I've seen (from that era) in quite a long time.Set in 1943 (in war-torn London), this beautifully restored, b&w drama held my undivided attention from start to finish.Featuring a good cast (headlined by David Farrar) and impressive camera-work (there's lots of great close-ups), The Small Back Room's story concerns the professional and personal conflicts of Sam Rice, a troubled research scientist and bomb-disposal expert with a "tin leg" and a weakness for whiskey.This solid, intense (and somewhat depressing) story even contains a scene filmed at Stonehenge.
After the wild fantasies of Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, Matter of Life and Death (and to a lesser extent Canterbury Tales, Colonel Blimp, and Spy in Black) this was a quiet Archers film, but one I enjoyed very much.
David Farrar and Kathleen Byron are fine, well-cast, adequate - the supporting players (including Cyril Cusack and a youngish Sid James) are good, and the story, although slight, keeps the interest and is done rather well.
An interesting film, ahead of its time in its depiction of the relationship between Sam (Farrar), the alcoholic, embittered bomb disposal expert looking for a purpose, and Susan (Byron), the woman who bears much of the brunt of his despair.There are good dramatic scenes in this film, some comic such as the visit by a silly minister (Robert Morley in excellent form), the meeting where Sam goes against his dept.
and supports the Army's doubt about a key weapon, the hallucination scene (surreal & gripping) and Sam's final confrontation with his nemesis (the crafty Nazi booby-trap) on the beach.The film also includes Powell/Pressburger's characteristic send-up of British manners/society, such as buffonish Ministers, slightly creepy/ambitious Civil Service men, and gruff soldiers.Well-acted and filled with many good supporting performances such as Cyril Cusack as an insecure bomb disposal officer and Michael Gough as a colleague of Sam's.
I particularly liked his scene where he shouts in desperation at a dying victim of a booby-trap; it comes across as cruel but it highlights the sheer desperation of the experts as they try to solve a deadly secret.On the whole, I enjoyed it but it is mostly a character study with the plot perhaps acting as secondary interest.
As the Germans drop explosive booby-traps on Britain in 1943, the embittered expert who'll have to disarm them fights a private battle with alcohol.While this film is about World War II and a man's struggles with alcohol (as noted in the plot summary), this is not what I particularly enjoyed about the film.
While not a great film in comparison to other Archer productions such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, 49th Parallel or The Red Shoes, The Small Back Room is a tense and interesting British thriller that recounts what it must have felt like to live in England during World War II, a most precarious time when the threat of Nazi air invasion was constantly hanging overhead (no pun intended).In this story, David Farrar and Kathleen Byron are reunited after their tumultuous chemistry in Black Narcissus, playing a respected bomb detector and his secretary girlfriend who find themselves fighting a personal war in addition to the larger conflict amidst Europe.
Farrar finds himself battling alcoholism and directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger create many parallels between the two instances.
What is most intriguing about this film, like so many other Powell and Pressburger productions, is how the ideas are presented as just as important as the action.
I like this, but realize some people just want to see stuff happen--not look inside a person's character.This film is about a very odd man.
Here is makes him interesting--while you like Sammy Rice and can't help but admire him, he's a very screwed up man.
Where's the crime, the chase, the gunshots, the road house, the slinky woman, the scream, the ominous shadows?Many years after its original release, Powell saw this film at a retrospective and declared it "cold." This emotional void is the real reason it failed to win an audience.Much time is wasted on satire and caricature: humpty dumpty Robert Morley, grinning despicable Jack Hawkins, the "Old Army" Colonel, the chaotic Committee Meeting, the intrusive over-animated blonde at the nightclub, etc.
Go for convincing realism throughout the film so the audience can respect Farrar's problems, his relationship with Kathleen, and most of all the German explosive device that is killing children.The explosive device is a careless figment of the writer's imagination.
Ten years is too long to try you." The concluding Pebble Beach scene, Revised: As the Sergeant and David walk to the explosive device, clouds like billowing black smoke darken the landscape, a stiff wind is blowing.
Pressburger and Powell are well known for their films like "Black Narcissus" (1947), "The Red Shoes" (1948) and "Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" (1943).
The strongest of these sub plots is the romance between a bitter scientist and a secretary, wonderfully played by David Farrar and Kathleen Byron.
It's more like Powell saw Chien Andalou right after it came out and was marked forever - besides the clocks and bottles in the "surreal" sequence, that close-up of the bomb on the beach.
Master filmmakers Powell and Pressburger return from their much-more-famed stint to make their much-more-underrated "smaller" film "The Small Back Room", a combined thriller/romance in heady expressionistic tones.
It's not really noir, but the lighting and staging put the genre to shame.Among many surprises here are some of the actors of Black Narcissus taking on new amazing roles, a mysterious German boobie-trap, and an expressionistic interlude that matches the opera from Red Shoes but is structured more like The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra.
The timing of this movie is great, too, as long involved sequences showcasing Sammy's alcoholism and doubt stretch to painful lengths, whereas his technically much longer scene defusing a bomb is so tense that it seems to whip by in a second.Fans of the Archers should pretty much make it a point to see this.
Nigel Balchin, a woefully neglected novelist, one of the finest British writers of the mid 20th century, wrote two novels against the backdrop of World War 2, his masterpiece Darkness Falls From The Air, written, set in and published during the London Blitz in 1941 and The Small Back Room, published two years later in 1943.
Had I been involved in the adaptation of novel to screen the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger would have been way down my list of candidates if even on the list at all for their penchant for fantasy, faerie-like romance and off-centre plotting does not lend itself to a story rooted in realism.
Having said that they manage to make something of a half-decent fist of it with the help of two outstanding leads in David Farrar as boffin Sammy Rice, who, some years before the outbreak of war had a foot amputated and replaced with a tin one and Kathleen Byron as his live-in lover, whipping-girl and colleague in the hush-hush department devoted to shortening the war.
As a real-life scientist Balchin's day job means his novels reek with authenticity not least when satirising the Civil Servants who got under his skin; Jack Hawkins grabs his role as R.B. Waring by the scruff of the neck and becomes the oleaginous character more interested in 'selling' a suspect new weapon to the army than in the lives of the men who will have to use it.
Both Farrar and Byron had appeared in the previous Powell-Pressburger effort the wildly overrated Black Narcissus and here they more than redeem themselves.
Sammy Rice (David Farrar) is a first-rate scientist and something of an expert in defusing bombs.
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.
I think it's fair to say that The Small Back Room marks the coming decline of Powell and Pressburger.
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..
If you haven't seen Kathleen Byron go mad in "Black Narcissus," you might want to try it.The same writers and directors -- Powell and Pressburger -- are responsible for this film and it shows.
As I have come to expect from Powell and Pressburger's films, the duo's writing and direction is excellent.
When it comes to the treatment of the World War II material, the wonderful bomb disposal scene towards the end of the film is the most tense scene of its kind that I have ever seen.
Powell attributed this in part to its extremely gloomy tone, which he did not think sat well with postwar British audiences.The film stars the sorely underrated David Farrar in a first rate performance as a military scientist named Sammy Rice, who is assigned to a "back room" think tank in London which is run by his friend and mentor Professor Mair.
There is a sense that Sammy is merely going through the motions when it comes to his life and, if there had not been a war on, he would probably do nothing more than shut himself away and drink.
The role of Susan could have been a rather thankless one but Kathleen Byron delivers an extremely good performance, her best moment being the breakup scene, and the character always seems like a real person.In one of his first film appearances, Michael Gough is very strong as Captain Stuart, a young officer who comes to Sammy in the hope that he can help figure out the workings of small booby traps which the Germans have recently begun dropping on Britain during raids.
Jack Hawkins is excellent as the think tank's smarmy, sleazy, obnoxious and condescending administrator R.B. Waring, whom both Sammy and Susan feel like punching at different points during the film.
107 minutes.Alternate U.S. release title: HOUR OF GLORY.SYNOPSIS: A back-room scientist meets his greatest challenge when called on to defuse a German bomb.COMMENT: Although handicapped by the serious miscasting of Kathleen Byron as the heroine, this is an engrossing, well-written (the phraseology and nuances of Civil Service talk are expertly captured) and often inventively directed (the sequence with the clocks) picture of back-room boffins engaged in secret war work.David Farrar does a sterling job keeping audience sympathy way up for what is basically a rather unpleasant character.
There are too many sub-plots (Cyril Cusack's wife, for example) and Kathleen Byron just can't help looking sinister even when she's supposed to be friendly.Although the theme has since been worked to death, "The Small Back Room" has it all over Time Bomb, Ten Seconds to Hell and the rest in both meticulous background and moodily stylish film noir photography.OTHER VIEWS: Based on Nigel Balchin's anti-heroic novel, the story of Sammy Rice's obsessive quest to understand the workings of a new German bomb, is intertwined with his tortured love for Susan.
I did not go into it expecting big things like the previous Powell/Pressburger classics "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes".
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".