Or “The Brass… and How to Get It”, maybe. A couple
of years after Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning, and the year before Richard Lester changed the landscape with A Hard Day’s Night, Ken Hughes adapted
his 1958 TV play Sammy for the big
screen, keeping his leading man Anthony Newley and adding just enough sauce and
sass to earn himself an X certificate. With Newley now all-but forgotten,
despite a stellar career in the 1960s which included a marriage to Joan Collins
and penning the lyrics for the Goldfinger
theme and the 1971 Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory, as well as the timeless standard Feeling Good, this is a
welcome and crisply remastered BFI release of the 1963 noirish Brit New Wave
proto-Goodfellas.
Bradford
teen Patsy (Foster) arrives at the Peepshow strip revue in seedy Soho to start
a new life after a one night stand with the club’s compère Sammy Lee, only to
find him in a spot of bother. Following an ill-advised all night gambling
session, Lee (Newley) is in debt to the tune of £300 (over £4k in today’s
money) to local gangster Connor, with five hours to pay off the debt or face
the consequences. Not too proud to ask his brother (Warren Mitchell, later to
become Alf Garnett) for help, but too proud to take any from the various women
in his life, Lee eventually has to try and raise to £300 himself through a
string of hastily contrived under the counter business transactions.
Newley
is excellent, a sharp-suited spiv spin on Leonard Rossiter’s later creations
and with similar mannerisms and bodily posture, while Foster is winningly keen
as the bushy-tailed ingénue abroad in the big city, discovering the district
she’s landed in isn’t all bright lights and ultimately coming unstuck. There’s
a wide cast of familiar faces in small roles, from Wilfrid Brambell as Lee’s
lackey, to Derek Nimmo as an effete and ineffectual second in command to Roy
Kinnear’s casino owner. Lynda Baron, Cyril Shaps and Miriam Karlin also turn up
in small but notable roles, and Robert Stephens is supremely oily as the
proprietor at the Peepshow.
From
the moment the title sequence takes a tour of the early morning emptiness of
London’s most notorious neighbourhood, it’s clear that Hughes’ film is going to
be a lot more thoughtful than many of its crime drama brethren. Indeed The Small World of Sammy Lee’s roots as
a television play are clear to see in its depth of focus on the characters and
their situations, with a number of themes paying off in a variety of generally
bittersweet ways as the film progresses. An absolute must-buy for fans of
British cinema history.
REVIEW: THE SMALL WORLD OF SAMMY LEE / CERT: 12
(TBC) / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: KEN HUGHES / STARRING: ANTHONY NEWLEY, JULIA
FOSTER, ROBERT STEPHENS, WILFRID BRAMBELL, WARREN MITCHELL / RELEASE DATE: 14TH NOVEMBER
