An Analysis of Gender Representation in The Small Back Room (1949): Considering Damaged Masculinity in British Cinema of the Postwar Era

Abstract

This paper examines a British film, The Small Back Room (1949), by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (a partnership together often known as “The Archers”). The film is a study on damaged masculinity, which it depicts with a vividness far greater than other British works of the same era.

Viewing the film through the broad lens of postwar cinema, I analyze the depiction of masculinity in The Small Back Room using Kaja Silverman’s theoretical model of “historical trauma,” devised in her analysis of postwar damaged masculinity in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). In particular, I examine in detail notable sequences involving a whiskey bottle and an unexploded shell, showing how both function as phallic symbols, before identifying the hallmarks of damaged masculinity within the film. Furthermore, via a close textual analysis of the protagonist’s male-female relationships in which I draw on Eve K. Sedgwick’s concept of “homosocial desire,” I demonstrate how, though the film appears at first glance to function as a standard heterosexual narrative, its gender structure is in fact distinct in its foregrounding of strong male bonds and its thorough exclusion of the female.