Pickup Alley (1957)

A narcotics agent (Victor Mature) chases a cold blooded dope smuggler/killer (Trevor Howard) from New York to Rome to Greece and New York again. Shot in stylish black and white CinemaScope by Oscar winning cinematographer Ted Moore (GOLDFINGER) and directed by a second string director John Gilling, it's a fairly diverting thriller. The ads for the film shrieked, "This is a picture about DOPE!" but the movie seems less concerned about narcotics (MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM it's not) than being a fairly standard action film in an international setting. The film's opening is a bit disconcerting. It's supposed to be New York but it's clearly London with a lot of English actors with bad American accents but that handicap is over once they hit Europe. The overly insistent score, mostly jazz, is by Richard Rodney Bennett. With that gorgeous piece of human architecture Anita Ekberg as Howard's unwilling accomplice, Martin Benson, Andre Morell, Dorothy Alison and Eric Pohlmann.