Rent The Rough and the Smooth (1959)

Of Belgravia and Points East - The Rough and the Smooth review by CH

Why is this Robert Siodmak film not better known? Made in England in 1959, from a Robin Maigham novel, It is filmed with something of the noir techniques he had learnt in Germany and brought to a series of films when exiled to America.

An archeologist Tony Britton cannot find a taxi to take him to the smart Belgravia house where he has a cool flat (his parents - including Joyce Carey - live in the rest of the building). Upshot is that he seeks one in a pub where, finding no driver at work, he falls in with a sultry German woman, played with teasing aplomb by Nadja Tiller. They share her ride, and soon a sofa, all of which runs counter to his involvement with well-connected Natasha Parry whose public announcement of their engagement reaches a gossip column after taking him by surprise. Continually surprising, the narrative - traversing high and low-class srettings - finds a place for sadism and drug dealing as part of an array of deception which includes a torrid carnality unexpected in a film ahead of Sixties' kitchen sinkery.

Preposterous as a summary sounds, its hundred minutes move at a clip and, once again, one can only marvel at somerthing in which even those with a small rôle enliven a large cast (what a character, Beatrice Varley as cynical landlady of a small country hotel whose bed springs make it clear that the latest occupants are not the first to put them through their rigours).