Essential Cinema: This Nation's Saving Grace: Discoveries From the Golden Age of British Cinema

THE SMALL WORLD OF SAMMY LEE

Directed by Ken Hughes

UK, 1963, 1h 47min, DCP

Essential Cinema: This Nation's Saving Grace: Discoveries From the Golden Age of British Cinema

There are no current or future screenings planned for this film.

“The UNCUT GEMS of early 1960s Brit cinema.”
—Edgar Wright

“Anthony Newley, thoroughly convincing in his supremely lonely portrayal of sad Sammy, gives what might be his greatest and most affecting performance, in what is perhaps Ken Hughes’ finest film.”
—BFI

A street-level view of a strip club in Soho and its MC, played by Anthony Newley. He is the kind of man who has so many hustles in his life that he can barely keep them straight. Throughout the course of this film, all his debts — personal and private — are called in, and he finally makes his amends onstage into a microphone. Sort of a Soho KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE with the advantage of Newley’s strange charm and comic timing. A real curio.

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