The Small World of Sammy Lee is a 1963 British black-and-white comedy-drama crime film written and directed by Ken Hughes and starring Anthony Newley, Julia Foster and Robert Stephens.

He has five hours to pay off a £300 gambling debt, and spends the day calling in all the favours he can think of from people he knows, trying all kinds of dodgy deals to raise cash.

The film was based on the 1958 BBC TV one-character television play Sammy, also directed by Hughes and starring Newley,[4] described by Variety as "a masterful piece of work.

[6] The production was censored at the last minute: during the final scene Rooney's character is beaten up, but the sponsors worried that this was too violent, so instead the screen went dark for twenty seconds.

[9] The original TV play was very successful and Hughes had requests to turn it into a feature film, but he was reluctant, considering that the one-person aspect of the story was crucial.

Godwin said "The chemistry between Ken Hughes and I was great, and we worked together extremely well in the development of the script and the casting of numerous Soho characters, a background with which we were both familiar.

[18] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "It commands attention primarily by its breezy workmanship, its variety of sets and frisky dialogue. ...

Script and direction look to the Mediterranean for their terms of reference – and photography to the nouvelle vague – especially in the exhilarating gallop round Soho at the outset of the film, the melancholy echo of the score in empty streets among the dustbins at dawn, and the incongruous stop shot when Sammy begins to tire of running and wants to 'get out of it'.

Ken Hughes, its director, reached back to the pre-war working-class bohemianism so perfectly captured by Graham Greene and Gerald Kersh".

Newley was involved with several offbeat and nearly forgotten projects, but this is worth seeing for a string of appearances by familiar British television faces.

"[23] British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Overlong 'realist' comedy-melodrama based on a TV play and filled with low-life 'characters'; vivid but cursed with a tedious hero.