SUBJECTS

Balchin, Nigel, 1908-1970. Small back room -- Film and video adaptations, Bombs -- Drama, Ordnance disposal units -- Drama, Physically handicapped -- Drama, Weapons industry -- Employees -- Drama, World War, 1939-1945 -- Drama

The Small Back Room

(Hour of Glory)

Imported Print

featuring

David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Leslie Banks,

Powell and Pressburger followed up the success of The Red Shoes with a work in an entirely different vein, the cynical, claustrophobic black-and-white noir The Small Back Room. Frequently drunk and always embittered, a handicapped World War II bomb-disposal expert (David Farrar) has only his coworker and lover (Kathleen Byron) to keep the terrors and his careerist supervisors away, until a sinister new Nazi booby-trap bomb arrives to truly test his limits. All low-angle, deep-focus photography, chiaroscuro lighting, and moody romanticism, The Small Back Room “achieves an oppressiveness as massive as [Fritz] Lang’s” (Raymond Durgnat).

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Emeric Pressburger
  • Michael Powell
  • Nigel Balchin
Based On
  • the novel by Balchin

Cinematographer
  • Christopher Challis
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 108 mins
Source
  • BFI
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View The Small Back Room documents  

Matters of life and death : the films of Michael Powell (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, James Quandt, 2002

A production of the Archers: the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (program note), Film Forum (New York), 1995

British sound films - 1928-1959 -- excerpt (book excerpt), Barnes & Noble Books, David Quinlan, 1985

Preview Dec. 31 - Feb.26 (program note), American Film Institute, 1981

Michael Powell: film artist (flyer), UCLA Film & Television Archive, 1981

Michael Powell and Powell & Pressburger (program note), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, William K. Everson, 1980

Michael Powell (article), Films In Review, William K. Everson, 1980

The small back room (review), Variety, Harold Myers, 1949

The small back room (review), Boston Phoenix, David Thomson

The small back room (program note), National Film Theatre (London, England)

Displaying 10 of 10 publicly available documents.


View all The Small Back Room documentation on CineFiles.