Powell & Pressburger: The Small Back Room
October 30, 2024
Enchanted Evenings: The Boundless Cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
A scientist (David Farrar) harmed physically and emotionally by the war struggles to keep himself together. His girlfriend (Kathleen Byron) helps, but he’s in danger of disappearing into his nightly whisky bottle. What has he got to lose? He’s just the man to confront an unexploded bomb on a deserted beach. Director Michael Powell knows his suspense: he devised the first Hitchcock Climax for his friend Alfred’s Blackmail, 1929.
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Passes: $125 | $85 SIFF Members - includes full series access
SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.
Powell and Pressburger masterfully create intimate character studies on a symphonic scale, but they can also craft this taut film noir chamber piece where the people we care about live next door. Research scientist Sammy Rice (David Farrar) was physically and psychologically damaged during World War II, and he now works in a weapons lab, nurturing a growing antipathy towards the Establishment he serves. He loses boozy hours brooding about “the bloody way everything’s arranged.” But when his stalwart girlfriend Susan (Kathleen Byron) is around he can get a grip on himself. If she offers him a drink he’s able to refuse it. Brimming with self-disgust, Sammy lurches through a noir world of entrapping shadows, and in an Expressionistic vision he tries to climb up the smooth sides of a giant Highland Whisky bottle. Back in clear-headed reality, he’s alone on a beach in the fresh air—but his hand trembles as he confronts an unexploded bomb. Can he afford to throw away his life? Powell is no stranger to gripping suspense: he devised the first ever Hitchcock Climax for his friend Alfred’s Blackmail (1929). Michael Gough, Cyril Cusack, Leslie Banks, Robert Morley. In beautiful black-and-white.
—Greg Olson
- Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- Principal Cast: David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Jack Hawkins, Leslie Banks, Cyril Cusack
- Country: United Kingdom
- Year: 1949
- Running Time: 106 min.
- Producer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- Cinematographers: Christopher Challis
- Editors: Clifford Turner
- Music: Brian Easdale
- Filmography: Night Ambush (1957), Pursuit of the Graf Spee (1956), The Tales of Hoffman (1951), The Fighting Pimpernel (1950), Gone to Earth (1950), Hour of Glory (1949), Black Narcissus (1947), Stairway to Heaven (1946), I Know Where I’m Going (1945), A Canterbury Tale (1944), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942)
- Language: English