The Small Back Room

In London during the Second World War, Sammy Rice, a bomb specialist, lost a leg in an accident and lives with a prosthetic. He is caught between pain, drink and bureaucracy. When a new kind of German booby trap appears, the disposal job falls to him. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger wrote, directed and produced. David Farrar plays Sammy, Kathleen Byron his girlfriend. It came after the pair's colourful and lavish period; black and white, confined and deliberately small in scale. Its best-known passage is the drinking scene: the whisky bottle on Sammy's desk swells until it fills the room, visualising addiction directly. The scene is bold for its time. The bomb disposal takes place on a beach and is almost silent; the tension is built entirely on sound and timing. The second subject is wartime bureaucracy: the time scientists lose in meeting rooms and the inability to decide. Who it is for: viewers who like British wartime cinema and Powell and Pressburger. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action; the film happens almost entirely indoors.