The Small Back Room

It was hard to be invested in this film until the climax.

Awfully stodgy--despite the occasionally nice verisimilitudinous touch (her secret smile to him at the dance club, for example). The whiskey & clocks montage was something else.

Quite possibly the most claustrophobic film ever made. A wonderful performance from David Farrar.

Maybe less vivacious than the likes of A Matter and Life and Death and The Red Shoes, this is a more grave, quiet and sorrowful melodrama by P&P. David Ferrar is excellent as the grief-stricken protagonist, seeming awfully tired of the world and himself.

David Farrar as the alcoholic bomberman was a excellent. Got to be the best I've seen him! While is does feel like a smaller Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger film, these two were masters at their craft, so The Small Back Room (1949) is a great movie with a lot of going on within it's bomb squad dynamic and troubled mind of the lead.

- ilginc halusinasyon sahneleri - Isik kullanimi - karakterler

Part character study about an alcoholic researcher dealing with his demon and the woman who loves him, part suspense thriller about a mysterious bomb; climaxing in a very suspenseful bomb defusing sequence. The movie succeeds in both, but less in combining both parts together successfully. Btw, the whole bomb seems overly complicated involving a lot of effort by Jerry for the little amount of victims it produces.

Viewed March 2, 2018.

The mood is exactly what I like about P&P films, a mix of resolute energy and inner despair and an examination of the conflict between those feelings in the context of WWII. Farrar gives a great performance but it's Byron's supporting role that makes it all work. Through her character we can share sympathy, admiration, and frustration with the struggles of the lead. There's a compelling narrative too, and some nice bits of levity that shine a ray of light through the dark cloud of total war.

Between high concept and outlandish escapades, Powell & Pressburger demonstrate range with this character piece, drawing back into the recesses of the guilty conscious of a self-destructive bastard who inflicts his own misery on others and must reconcile the tension of his personal and professional lives. It's a ticking time bomb of a film, shot as exquisitely as any of The Archers' colorful fantasias, with careful attention paid to light and depth to create claustrophobic texture.

Farrar and Byron are a nice fit. But the film is rather dated.

watched: 2014, 2024

It was on, but I just didn't really get excited about it. It just never really got going, even during the bomb disposal scene near the end of the movie, and I'd say it takes an awful lot NOT to make a bomb disposal scene exciting/jumpy.

As if Powell and Pressburger watched The Lost Weekend and thought "If only this had more politicking."

Another fine Powell/Pressburger outing, employing their slightly skewed, always-a-bit-left-of-center filmmaking to a dark melange of melodrama and thriller. Like their best work, it always teeters just on the brink of absurdity, but bears the stamp of master filmmakers.

It's difficult to say anything about this movie. It's a solid character study/romantic drama with a dash of wartime thriller, no complaints about it at all but it's too restrained to be worthy of much attention. It's hard to imagine it being anyone's favorite film, or even their favorite Powell & Pressburger. The one moment that stands out is the clock/whiskey hallucination, which is either clever or silly depending on your mood.

Good film.