The Small Back Room, released in the United States as 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. It was based on the 1943 novel of the same name by Nigel Balchin. The theme is the unsung heroes of the last war, the 'backroom boys', gradually coming into their own. Plot Sammy Rice (David Farrar) is a British scientist working with a specialist "back room" team in London as a bomb disposal expert during the Second World War. Rice is embittered because he feels military scientific research is being incompetently managed. He is also enduring unremitting pain from his artificial foot. The painkillers he has been prescribed are ineffective, and his use of alcohol as an analgesic has led to his alcoholism. His girlfriend Susan (Kathleen Byron) puts up with his self-pitying, self-destructive behaviour as long as she can, but finally breaks up with him, telling him that he lacks the ambition to better himself. Rice is brought in by Captain Stuart (Michael Gough) to help solve the problem of small booby-trapped explosive devices (mines) being dropped by Nazi bombers, which have killed four people, including three children. They receive some useful information from a critically wounded young soldier (Bryan Forbes in his debut). Two further mines are found at Chesil Beach: they look like common thermos flasks. Stuart is first on the scene but has difficulty getting Rice on the telephone in his flat because Rice is alone following his break-up with Susan, angry, drunk and destructive. Rice quickly sobers up and travels to Chesil Beach, only to find that Stuart tried to defuse one of the mines and has been blown up. Rice sets to work on the second mine after listening to the notes Stuart dictated to an ATS corporal (Renée Asherson) during his attempt earlier in the day. He discovers that the mine has in fact two booby traps, not one, and manages to defuse them both. When Rice returns to London, his self-esteem somewhat restored by his success, he is offered an officer commission as head of the Army's new scientific research unit. He accepts. Susan returns to him and they go back to his flat to find she has repaired and reinstated everything he damaged while drunk. Cast David Farrar as