The Small Back Room (U.S. title: Hour of Glory) is a 1949 film by the British producer-writer-director team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger starring David Farrar and Kathleen Byron and featuring Jack Hawkins and Cyril Cusack.

Rice, who has a past background in bomb disposal, is drawn by a Captain Stuart into a hushed assignment probing the secrets of a new Nazi booby trap device.

In the middle of both bureaucratic and political turmoil impacting their section, Susan urges him to be more assertive at his job, which he takes badly and goes on a flat-smashing drunk.

Susan is on the job, and direct him to an urgent meeting with an army colonel whom he had previously supported during a contentious hearing over an experimental artillery gun the officer had opposed.

The pair didn't separate and The Small Back Room marked the reuniting of Powell and Pressburger with producer Alexander Korda after a profitable but contentious time at the Rank Organisation that culminated with The Red Shoes (1948).

The lapse which it is most hard to forgive is that into surrealistic camerawork illustrating Rice's internal struggle with himself when, with his morale at its lowest ebb, he thirsts to open a bottle of whisky.

"[9] Leslie Halliwell wrote in 1989: "Rather gloomy suspense thriller with ineffective personal aspects but well-made location sequences and a fascinating background of boffins at work in post-war London.

The pair were obviously uninspired by the lengthy passages of chat in which the backroom boffins bicker about their latest inventions, but their masterful use of camera angles and cutting gives the finale an unbearable tension.