REEL NOTES № 004 — The Small World of Sammy Lee

REEL NOTES — The Screening Salon · № 004

The finale of Volume One — the week before Christmas. One film, in full: the story first, then the picture, whole. Every Reel Notes evening opens with a forty-five-minute deep dive into the film — where it came from, how it was made, the myth and the meaning — before a single frame plays. Then the lights go down, the phones go away, and we watch it end to end. In a room of fifty-five seats, that isn't a screening. It's a salon.

Side A · The Discussion — 7:00pm
Anthony Newley, the reluctant all-rounder · Soho on film, before the clean-up · the British race-against-the-clock thriller. Not a lecture. Not trivia. The kind of talk that sends you into the dark seeing more than you did.

Side B · The Film — 8:00pm
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) · Directed by Ken Hughes · 107 minutes · Cert 12

Sammy Lee has five hours to find three hundred pounds, or the men he owes will take it out of his hide. A Soho strip-club compère runs the length of his own small world — bookies, brothers, last favours — in Anthony Newley's blistering one-man race against the clock. The London nobody sent home on a postcard: all neon, nerve and borrowed time.

★ The story first — a proper forty-five-minute talk before the picture
★ The film in full — lights low, phones away, watched in company
★ 55 seats. Every one close.
★ Out by 10:30 — a school-night salon

The season pass: all four films of Volume One for £60 — one passcard, shown on the door, your seat held and reserved at every screening, and a goodie bag of good things to eat.

🚪 Doors 6:45pm · 🕖 Talk 7:00pm · 🎬 Film 8:00pm · Out by 10:30pm
📍 28 Heath Street, Hampstead, London NW3 6TE — thirty seconds from Hampstead tube
💷 £18 · 🪑 55 seats only

STEP IN. COME UP. BE PART OF THE STORY.