THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH is a low budget British drama from 1959 featuring direction from B-movie honcho Robert Siodmak. In fact, the movie has quite an international feel to it, featuring a supporting role for US stalwart William Bendix and a leading part for Austrian actress Nadja Tiller, playing the femme fatale of the piece. There are also minor turns for British talent including Donald Wolfit (as a sleazy journalist), Adrienne Corri, and an incredibly youthful Geoffrey Bayldon, although I missed spotting the latter.
The problem with this film is that it's quite uninteresting. A boring young gent starts on an affair with a notorious woman, and that's about all that happens. There's no suspense and not much in the way of drama, just lots of pub visits and people sitting around talking. British B-movies are usually a lot more fun than this one, which feels stodgy and dull throughout. It may have been quite controversial at the time due to some rather frank portrayals of sex and sexuality, but nowadays it's quite tame.
