Pickup on South Street (1953)

Director: Sam Fuller                Writer: Sam Fuller, Dwight Taylor
Film Score: Leigh Harline         Cinematography: Joe MacDonald
Starring: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, and Richard Kiley

Pickup on South Street is a fifties noir that shares its basic setting and construction with many of its big studio contemporaries like The Naked City and On Dangerous Ground, but its visual style in many ways is more akin to independent oddities like Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly. Most of the reason for that goes to Sam Fuller and his idiosyncratic writing and directorial style. Not to be confused with Raymond Chandler's story, Pickup on Noon Street, it’s an odd film, all the time threatening to spin out of control and fling itself into farce. With argot like “cannon” for pickpockets, “muffins” for women, “tiger,” “the big thumb,” and on and on, the viewer is continuously on the precipice of disbelief, with only Fuller’s thinnest of tethers to keep the audience in suspension. But he does manage to suspend that disbelief and keep viewers riveted to the screen in a way that almost defies analysis. Almost.

While the characters are as one-dimensional as a Mickey Spillane novel, Fuller manages to keep interest in them by not making them cliché. And that is the real beauty of Pickup on South Street. We expect Candy to be a whore and manipulate Skip to get the film. But she really loves him. We expect Joey to wimp out and not go through with it. But he turns out to be a commie with conviction. We expect Skip to do the wrong thing for the wrong reason all the time. But instead he can’t sell out his country and winds up being a stand up guy for Moe. This is not forties noir, and no one would confuse it with that. The fifties had a style all its own. Also, the lack of a femme fatale, emphasis on communism, and the hokey, happy ending all put it well outside of noir territory.

But is it a classic, as The B List contends? Depends on the definition. As a quirky, cult classic, sure. As a gritty film noir, not by a long shot. For me, that distinction would go to fifties films like The Big Heat or Gun Crazy. The essay by Ty Burr in The B List plays on the style of the film, and tries for the same tough-talking, wise-cracking style and falls short. Less informative than stylistic, the tone wears thin before too long and one begins hoping soon for the text to end. Fortunately, no such impatience awaits the viewer of the film itself. Pickup on South Street is a rewarding experience for those not expecting classic noir.