The Small Back Room

There is a sustained scene of mild threat and suspense in which a bomb disposal expert attempts to defuse a complex bomb. A woman reads out a radio transcript of another bomb expert’s final moments before the device he was working on exploded. There are also undetailed verbal references to children having been killed by bombs which may have been disguised as toys.

Very mild bad language includes ‘damn’, ‘crikey’ and ‘blast’.

A couple are shown kissing and sinking down onto a sofa in a horizontal embrace before being interrupted by a phone call.

There is a reference to a soldier having placed himself in fatal danger because he feared ‘being laughed at as a sissy’. In another scene a man refuses to remove his prosthetic leg in the presence of his girlfriend despite the physical pain it causes him; it is implied that his behaviour stems from internalised disablism, but she makes it clear that his disability does not affect her feelings for him.

A man is shown taking prescribed painkillers which he and others casually refer to as ‘dope’.

Scenes show a man craving alcohol and occasionally getting drunk, having developed alcoholism due to chronic pain and implied depression; at one point his struggle to resist drinking is illustrated by a fantastical sequence in which he is tormented by a giant whisky bottle. In other scenes people smoke pipes and cigarettes, reflecting the era in which the film was made.