Pickup on South Street.

Review #2541: Pickup on South Street.

Cast: 

Richard Widmark (Skip McCoy), Jean Peters (Candy), Thelma Ritter (Moe Williams), Murvyn Vye (Captain Dan "Tiger"), Richard Kiley (Joey), Willis Bouchey (Zara), Milburn Stone (Winoki), Vic Perry (Lightning Louie a.k.a. "Godkin"), Harry Carter (Detective Dietrich), George E. Stone (Willie, police desk clerk), George Eldredge (Fenton), and John Gallaudet (Detective Lieutenant Campion) Directed by Samuel Fuller (#1790 - Park Row, #2234 - The Steel Helmet, #2400 - The Baron of Arizona)

Review: 

"People living on the edge of society don't give a damn about politics. I wanted my film to be told through the eyes of the powerless. Cold war paranoia? Hell, these crooks were more interested in just getting by."

Sure, it's time again to encounter a Samuel Fuller movie. Pickup on South Street was his sixth feature as a director. With the finishing of Park Row, Fuller, under contract with Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox, was approached with a script called "Blaze of Glory" by Dwight Taylor (a former reporter for The New Yorker before becoming a writer with films such as When Tomorrow Comes [1939] and I Wake Up Screaming [1941]) about a woman lawyer falling in love with her criminal client in a murder trial. He liked it, but as a newspaper man in his old days, he knew those cases take time to play out, so he instead wanted to do a film about an outlaw and their gal but on the scale of small-time thieves. Alluding to hot button issues of the time such as fears of communists and secrets being sold (such as the mostly recent case of Klaus Fuchs), Fuller stated later that he wanted to "take a poke at the idiocy of the cold war climate of the fifties". Incidentally, the working title was "Pick-pocket", but executives thought it sounded too "European", so it eventually landed on a title that was inspired by Fuller's special memories of South Street in New York (in 1959, French filmmaker Robert Bresson directed a movie, called, well, Pickpocket). He soon did research on pickpockets through NYPD Detective Dan Campion, who he based the character Tiger on*. Fuller was given credit for the screenplay while Taylor was credited with the story. Despite grumblings from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover about the nature of the film (which never refers to the FBI at any point), the movie breezed through to release without a hitch, which saw it make double its budget of $780,000 back with audiences. In 1967, 20th Century Fox released The Cape Town Affair, a film shot in South Africa that basically was a remake (with Fuller being co-credited for the screenplay with "Harold Medford") that had James Brolin and Jacqueline Bissett cast in the lead roles alongside Claire Trevor.

All Fuller cared about was making a thriller about people on the margins, and he sure got it here with a satisfying feature that has a dark streak in people that wanted to get by with what they had. Even in a movie filmed on a set, you still have the feeling of seeing a tremendous city of strange seediness. It's a noir movie that is both rich and lean enough for all to enjoy for 80 minutes. It all rides on the cool nature of Widmark (who worked with Fuller once more with Hell and High Water [1954]), who is the usual cocksure self that is easy enough to like for what he does in the long run of tricks and guile. He doesn't care for flag-waving or people trying to get one over on him because if anybody is going to be the conman (physically or emotionally), it's going to be him. Fuller wanted an "average-looking woman" for the lead, which namely meant not wanting Ava Gardner or Betty Grable (contemporary articles apparently stated Grable rejected it, while Fuller's autobiography claimed otherwise) and landed on the bow-legged walking of Peters, who I guess is the kind of person who could make a guy like Widmark try to walk a semi-straight and narrow path, even if they have some offbeat scenes together; at one point, trying to confront someone breaking into his little shabby place. Widmark socks the first thing he sees, which happens to be Peters. Ritter (in an award nominated role) makes for quality support as a stoolie that still has a semblance of charm that shines right through to her final scene, an informant of the streets with standards right to the bitter end. The adversaries are the usual type of crook to lie within the lines of noir (really it could be anybody besides Commies), even if at a certain point you know where it's going to go. With a cast like this, it's got something for everyone with the type of people that show up every now and then. As a whole, if you like the hard touches of Fuller in tabloid narratives and being straight to the point, you'll have plenty to appreciate here. 

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Daniel J. Campion served 27 years on the force, which saw him serve as a detective on the pickpocket squad beginning in 1929. He retired in 1954, and died in 1958 at the age of 54.