On Chesil Beach… The Small Back Room (1949), BFI, Cinema Unbound

What I really want sir is a bit of expert guessing and some expert advice on how to handle it when we get our hand on one…

 

This is another one of those films that just has to be seen on the big screen and the BFI’s restoration-in-progress digital 4k presentation brought home every nuance and, especially, bead of sweat on David Farrar’s brow as he battled alcohol addiction in his nightmarish confrontation with a giant bottle of scotch and then struggled to retain composure in a very personal battle with a fiendish German bomb lying amongst the shifting pebbles of Chesil Beach. This confrontation between man and booby-trapped explosive has never seemed so tense, more visceral and further away from my own experience of that stretch of beach from Abbotsbury to Weymouth.

This is also a return to top quality Powell and Pressburger after three well-made and under-rated films that are all good but just not this good. We’re set up for Sammy Rice (Farrar) and this fateful meeting by a devastating cameo from Renée Asherson as an A.T.S. corporal who has to relay the doomed attempt to defuse another of the bombs by another officer, and it’s never hit me so hard as she repeats his words, his brave joking about the situation – Wembley being packed for the FA Cup final between man and bomb – before getting to his last words as he realises the bomb has an inexplicable second wire… Not only has a character we like lost their life but we relive the detail through someone else’s grief. That’s inventive and leaves the audience helpless as the next man steps up.

 

Kathleen Byron

The Small Back Room is packed with such moments; overloaded with great cameos, humour and spirit. If you don’t want to live in a world in which Sidney James runs your local pub and Kathleen Byron has your best interests at heart, then I can’t help you. This is probably David Farrar’s finest moment or jointly with Black Narcissus and in both cases that’s down to Kathleen; it takes two to tango and whilst Sammy can’t dance – not with a tin leg he can’t – the relationship between Byron’s Susan and him is the core of the film. Kathleen perseveres with Sammy not just because she can see how far he’s fallen but because she sees how far he could still rise and she’s not willing to give up on her love, not by a long chalk!

Based on the 1943 book by Nigel Balchin, a psychologist who wanted to show the inner struggles not just of addiction but also of brave men injured and worn down by the War. Sammy has lost his leg in an unsuccessful attempt at bomb disposal and this has led to constant pain, suppressed by a mixture of “dope” – codeine? – and drink. He is too proud to take his tin leg off in front of Sue and every day is a constant struggle between using the drugs or hitting the hard stuff. She is with him all the way though, as they keep a bottle of Scotch to test his mettle in his flat and, whilst she lives across the hall, she and her cat, seem more at home in Sammy’s place.

 

Robert Morley and Jack Hawkins

The film is also about the “boffins” of the small back room tasked with developing new weapons. Sammy reports into Professor Mair (Milton Rosmer) and the unit is overseen by a-low content careerist called R.B. Waring (Jack Hawkins giving it the full narcissist...). Politics abounds and nothing appears to have changed with their low-content glad-handing minister, (Robert Morley credited as "A Guest") paying a visit and having to be entertained by a made-up experiment. He has no more idea what they do than the next fop and is by no means secure in his position and this could have all kinds of unpleasant ramifications for the team.

 

The unit is involved in testing a new gun and there’s a splendid sequence at Stone Henge with Sammy watching the test as Colonel A.K. Holland (Leslie Banks, last seen by me in the Powell Quota Quickie, Fire Raisers!) not impressed with the evidence of his own eyes; on the battlefield this new gun could cost lives. There’s another set piece when the unit has to present its findings to a committee of the Minister of War, civil servants, rival scientists and the General. It’s played partly as farce with loud roadworks obscuring the details and the minister looking at paintings for the ministry during Sammy’s reading of the statistics. But then the General asks him for his opinion and, to his credit he tells it like it is even though it’ll cost him the approbation of his seniors.

 

Michael Gough and David Farrar

“I’ll… hand it over to Susan. She’s got it all worked out in the way women always have… She’ll take it and make it into what she wants…”

But Sammy is mired in his own disability and frustrates Susan’s attempts to not only count his blessings but also to exert his force of personality and expertise. In the novel he’s over-thinking everything and relying on her to provide momentum, overlooking his achievements in a pattern Balchin well recognised from his patients’ struggles with what we would now term PTSD and imposter syndrome. He’s a work in progress and that’s something seen on both paper and on screen.

Yet Sammy is sharp as a tack and compassionate with it, a natural leader of men with more moral courage than most. Even as he is so hard on himself, he shows such emotional intelligence in dealing with a nervy co-worker, Corporal Taylor (another quietly striking cameo from Cyril Cusack), who is having marital issues and doesn’t want to accept his own weaknesses at work. Sammy firstly asks his advice about trembler fuses and then coaxes him to ask for help, agreeing to his leaving early to help his wife. Beautiful interplay between the two, Farrar raising his game alongside Cusack in another of the film’s poignant moments.

David Farrar and Cyril Cusack

The film starts with Captain Dick Stuart (Michael Gough) making his way to see the unit and explaining the mysterious items that may or may not be new German bombs. Sammy Rice is your man advises Professor Mair and with Susan’s help, Stuart locates him in the pub run by "Knucksie" Moran (Sid James) who has just advised her man against drinking whiskey, he knows he can’t handle it. Back at Sammy’s flat Stuart explains the explosive enigma and Sammy’s hooked… Mair’s right about his intuiting and expertise. The two take an instant liking as does Stuart to Susan who he offers to walk home before she tells him she lives across the hall. It’s one of Gough’s best roles too.

We’re hooked too and are rooting for these three from now on. If any film shows the importance of the Archers’ combination of script and direction it’s this one, the quality doesn’t really drop throughout and the whole team is magnificent. A micro-managed masterpiece of dramatic thought on screen. I look forward to the finalised restoration from the BFI, it’s worth every second of their painstaking devotion!

You've got to make up your mind whether you want to spend your whole life being a person it's just too bad about or not...

Try harder Sammy.