Friday Night Movie number 17 – The Small Back Room

This weeks offering is a tense psychological thriller about a World War II bomb disposal expert, who after losing a leg, turns to the bottle.

The plot revolves around a new form of Nazi booby trapped bomb that has killed civilians in various parts of the British Isles. Nobody knows how it is triggered or fused because in most of the cases the bomb has exploded, leaving no usable evidence of its trigger method.

The film shows the lead characters battle with the bottle and his ultimate confrontation with the mistery bomb.

The film stars David Farrar as Sammy Rice, the alcoholic bomb disposal man, Kathleen Byron as his girlfriend Susan, and Jack Hawkins as Rice’s boss, R.B. Waring. It was produced by the famous Powell and Presburger team and has fantastic camerwork and the bleak landscape of Chesil Beach is the setting for one of the films most powerful scenes. I must say that one scene in particular, that when Rice is having a psychological crisis reminded very much of the work of the Welsh surrealist photographer Angus McBean.

This is another half forgotten gem that is well worth watching.

Click the link below to watch the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khvYYs-WxaA