It’s been decades since they’ve passed, but this summer is shaping up to be the season of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Alongside MoMA’s massive retrospective of their work, Annie Baker will introduce The Tales of Hoffmann at Film at Lincoln Center next weekend, the Martin Scorsese-narrated documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger will arrive later this summer, and a new 4K restoration of their underseen gem The Small Back Room will be coming to Film Forum at the end of the month courtesy of Rialto Pictures.
In their classically romantic suspense thriller The Small Back Room, David Farrar stars as a bomb disposal expert Sammy Rice, embittered by a tin leg courtesy of an on-the-job snafu and battling addiction (giving Powell and Pressburger the opportunity for a bizarre DT fantasy sequence), until faced with the ultimate explosive challenge: a German bomb sporting an unbeatable booby trap.
The new 4K restoration is a collaboration of Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation and the BFI National Archive, in association with Studiocanal. Mr. Scorsese and his longtime film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who was married to Michael Powell from 1984 until his death in 1990, served as consultants on the restoration.
Ahead of a run beginning June 28, see the trailer below.