The Small Back Room

Combining a deftly-handled character study with nail-biting suspense, 1949's The Small Back Room offers yet another stellar example of cinematic mastery from the esteemed British filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. After the success of their lavish Technicolor hit The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger demonstrated their astonishing versatility with this introspective, psychologically complex drama (based on the novel by Nigel Balchin) about a World War II research scientist and military bomb-disposal expert named Sammy Rice (David Farrar) who's battling alcoholism and phantom pains (from an amputated foot) while trying to maintain a degree of normalcy in his relationship with his secretary girlfriend Susan (Kathleen Byron). The drama kicks into high gear when Sammy is assigned to defuse and dismantle a mysterious new kind of German bomb. While the climactic bomb-defusing scene is one of the most intense ever filmed, The Small Back Room boasts many other memorable moments, some dealing with the tremors and terrors of alcoholism (using the same surrealist approach that Salvador Dali employed for the dream sequences of Hitchcock's Spellbound), and others with the potent romantic drama unfolding between Sammy and Susan. Presented with a newly restored high-definition transfer, DVD extras on this Criterion Collection release include a richly informative audio commentary by Sight & Sound editor Charles Barr, a 2007 video interview with cinematographer Christopher Challis (who also shot The Red Shoes), relevant excerpts from Powell's audio dictations for his posthumously published two-volume autobiography A Life in Movies, and an accompanying booklet with an appreciative essay by film critic Nick James. Highly recommended. (J. Shannon)