While filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger — aka The Archers — may be best known for their extravagant color films like “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” “A Matter of Life and Death,” “Black Narcissus,” and “The Red Shoes,” their underseen black-and-white, post-WWII potboiler “The Small Back Room” may be their most daring.
Following a wartime weapons expert whose experiences studying and disarming bombs have led to injuries and a nasty drinking habit, the film came at a time when audiences were ready to look past the fighting, so it didn’t perform well at the box office. Now, thanks to Rialto Pictures, the film is set to hit theaters once again on June 28 with a 4K restoration. Watch the new trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.
The restoration, handled by The Film Foundation and the BFI National archives, in association with StudioCanal, was also conducted with the help of longtime Archers fan and friend Martin Scorsese, as well as Powell’s widow and Scorsese’s editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. In addition to the film’s opening at New York’s Film Forum and national rerelease, “The Small Back Room” will also be featured as part of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art entitled “Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell & Pressburger,” which runs from June 21 to July 31.
Reuniting David Farrar and Kathleen Byron after burning up the screen in “Black Narcissus,” “The Small Back Room” is a character study, political drama, war thriller, and romance all wrapped into one. In comparing it with more contemporary fare, one can put it against two relatively recent Best Picture Oscar winners, “The Hurt Locker” and “Oppenheimer,” as all three films deal with the negative after-effects of combining war and science, as well as the personal repercussions of putting one’s life at great risk for destructive causes.
Utilizing elements of German expressionism to communicate the tortured psyche of the main character, and with nerve-pounding interior and exterior sequences, the Archers’ visual splendor is made triumphant by this new 4K restoration. Scrubbed of scratches and cracks, but not digitized beyond recognition, this new print repairs the worn-out quality of the digital edition currently available on the Criterion Channel and elsewhere.
For a peek at how “The Small Back Room” looks circa 2024, watch the new trailer below.
