The directors of WW2-set drama The Small Back Room, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, are predominantly known for their famous works The Red Shoes (1948), which earned the 9th spot on the British Film Institute’s ‘Greatest British Films’ list in 1999, and A Matter of Life and Death (1946), a film which placed 20th on the same BFI list. There was an expectation, when Powell and Pressburger directed The Small Back Room, that it would continue the vivid surrealism and lavish craft that they were known for.
But the film subverted those expectations by being a more reserved British black and white noir, a movie that tackled the bureaucracy of war and the fallibility of forced masculinity and did so with a more everyman approach. To mark its 75th anniversary, StudioCanal have released a restored version of the film, courtesy of The Film Foundation and BFI National Archive’s meticulous work in restoring it, funded by StudioCanal themselves.
This review was first posted on June 4th 2024. Full review linked below.
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