Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Starring: David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Jack Hawkins, Michael Gough, Leslie Banks,
Cyril Cusack
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1949
adaptation of Nigel Balchin's novel The Small Back Room may be set at the height of World War II, 1943 to be precise,
but it's very much dealing with a post-war theme. It centres the
emasculation felt by many British men who had emerged from the
conflict with mental and physical disabilities, who despite the best
efforts of various support networks felt like they were only half
men.
Sammy Rice (David Farrar) is a "back room boy," a scientist
who fights the war from a small office in London where he works as
part of a team who develop new weapons for the allies and analyse
those of the enemy. That's not to say Sammy has never faced danger. At
some point he lost a leg, which has now been replaced by a metal
substitute. The artificial limb drives him crazy with what a modern
audience will now view as a sort of body dysmorphia, and he soothes
his pain with alcohol, though he avoids whisky. Every night ends with
Sammy being kicked out of his local pub when the landlord (a pre-Carry On Sid James) refuses to continue serving him, and so he
returns to his flat where a taunting bottle of Scotch sits on a table.
Sammy has vowed not to open the bottle until Germany has been
defeated, but in 1943 that seems a long way off, and it's an act of
extreme masochism on Sammy's part to torture himself so.
Also awaiting Sammy each evening are the loving arms of his live-in
girlfriend Susan (Farrar's Black Narcissus co-star Kathleen Byron), who also works as a
secretary to his boss (Jack Hawkins). Poor Susan is subjected
to the same mopey tirade of self-pity from Sammy every night, but she
sticks by him regardless, not out of pity but of genuine affection.
She constantly tells Sammy that his prosthetic leg doesn't bother her,
and we can tell she means it. But Sammy can't accept that someone
views him as a whole man rather than the half a man he sees himself
as. His self-loathing begins to drive a wedge between Sammy and Susan
until he finds possible redemption in the form of booby traps that
have been dropped by the Nazis in civilian parts of England. The
military have thus far been unable to figure out the mechanics of the
bombs, but if Sammy can do so he just might feel like he has a purpose
again. On the other hand, tampering with such devices may claim his
life.
Focussing more on the fraught romance between Sammy and Susan than on
the military intrigue of the source novel, Powell and Pressburger
examine the notion that women crave love while men crave respect.
Sammy receives enviable love from Susan, but it's not enough. He needs
to be told he has a purpose, not by the subjective woman who adores
him, but by an objective member of his own profession. Anyone who has
ever hit a wall in their chosen career only to be comforted by a
well-meaning lover whose words are rendered meaningless will empathise
with Sammy's feelings, if not his stubbornness. But it's impossible
not to sympathise with the long-suffering Susan. Sammy's cold
treatment of her is almost an unwitting form of abuse on his part.
He's an emotional zombie whose heart is as numb as his leg. At several
points Susan tries to goad him into a confrontation but fails to rouse
him. His spirit is so broken he simply can't see the point in
arguing.
The Small Back Room has a structure reminiscent of Dreyer's Ordet in that for a long stretch it leaves you wondering where
exactly it's headed as it refuses to weave anything that resembles a
traditional narrative. Instead it puts us in the presence of these
people, detailing their everyday ups and downs (mostly downs in this
case) so richly that by the final act we're suddenly and surprisingly
overcome by emotion as we realise how much we care about these
characters. Powell and Pressburger wilfully obscure the espionage
subplot for most of the film, rendering it almost inconsequential
compared to the tribulations of Sammy and Susan. One scene sees Sammy
take part in a meeting with various ministers, boffins and military
personnel to discuss the merits of a new type of gun. In the grand
scheme of the war it's a highly important gathering, but for Sammy
it's just Tuesday. Rather than focussing on the details of what's
being discussed at the meeting, the filmmakers instead obscure much of
the dialogue by drowning it out with the sound of nearby roadworks. A
full decade before Hitchcock would garner praise for a similar trick
in North by NorthWest, Powell and Pressburger are explicitly letting the audience know
that sometimes there are more important things to pay attention to in
a movie than its plot.
And there's much to pay attention to here. This black and white
production may not boast the technicolor and lavish sequences of the
Archers' more famous works, but it's a visually striking film
nonetheless. The film's social realist narrative doesn't prevent
Powell and Pressburger from engaging in expressionist techniques, like
the scene where a thirsty Sammy is haunted and taunted by that bottle
of Scotch, which assumes gigantic proportions while its outline
appears on his flat's wallpaper pattern. Prior to that pivotal
sequence, the bottle is always conspicuous in its placement in the
frame; just as it's rarely out of mind for Sammy, it's rarely out of
sight for the viewer. Another wonderful visual sees Sammy greeted by
his own pathetic reflection when he discovers Susan has removed her
portrait from the picture frame he keeps in his home, a magnificent
way to convey how much he took her for granted and the sudden
emptiness he now feels in her absence. Byron's beautifully expressive
eyes are exploited to great effect by Powell's camera, which often
focusses on their sadness as she tries to hold it together for the
sake of her stubborn lover.
Like the aforementioned Ordet, The Small Back Room climaxes with a set-piece that is positively transcendent as a
hungover Sammy finds himself tasked with dismantling an active Nazi
booby trap on Chesil Beach. It's the most fraught bomb disposal scene
in all of cinema, not just because of how Powell technically
constructs the sequence with his own bomb-maker's precision, but
because it arrives in the aftermath of a possibly relationship-ending
argument between Sammy and Susan. As Sammy's shaky hands try to
grapple with tiny wires and cables we're on the edge of our seats
because we know that if he pulls this off he'll finally feel whole
again and might be able to accept and appreciate Susan's love. If it
goes wrong we dread to think of the effect it will have on Susan. The
scene is made all the more substantial by that which directly proceeds
it: as a stenographer recounts the notes dictated by an officer who
lost his life attempting to defuse the same bomb, tears begin to well
in her eyes and she chokes on his words. In what feels like a callback
to David Niven and Kim Hunter's famous radio conversation in A Matter of Life and Death, the dead man flirts from beyond the grave with the stenographer as
though figuring he had nothing to lose at that point, he'd shoot his
shot. Sometimes it takes the threat of being blown to pieces by a Nazi
bomb to make a man realise what's important.
