The Passing of the Third Floor Back is a 1935 British drama film directed by Berthold Viertel and starring Conrad Veidt, Anna Lee, Rene Ray and Frank Cellier.

In the case of one couple, Major Tomkin and his wife, this involves pressuring their daughter, Vivian, to marry Wright in spite of her obvious horror at the idea.

The stranger observes the meanness shown by the other members of the house, and gently encourages them to treat each other better and to pursue their dreams rather than live in fear about their precarious social positions.

On a bank holiday, the stranger announces that he will treat them all to a boat trip to Margate, surprising the more snobbish residents by insisting that the servants, including Stasia, join them.

1908 play – London theatre cast: Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson as The Stranger; Alice Crawford as Vivian; Gertrude Elliott as Stasia; Ian Robertson as Major Tompkins; Mr.H.Marsh Allen as Christopher Penny; Haidee Wright as Miss Kite; Wilfred Foster as Mr. Harry Larcom; Kate Bishop as Mrs. De Hooley; Agnes Thomas as Mrs.Sharp; Edward Sass as John Samuels; also includes Ernest Hendrie and Kate Carlyon The film was the second British film of the Austrian director Berthold Viertel, who had left Germany in the late 1920s and had directed Little Friend (1934).

Little Friend was considered sufficiently successful for him to be awarded a three-film contract with Gaumont, the first of which was to be an adaptation of Jerome's The Passing of the Third Floor Back after a planned biopic of Lord Byron was abandoned.

[5] Viertel studied the recently released film The Barretts of Wimpole Street, which was similarly set in the confined location of a house.