Watch Pickup on South Street – Criterion Collection Movie Online
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Watch Pickup on South Street – Criterion Collection Movie Online.
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This is one of the finest uncouth budget crime films of the fifties, one that manages to regain an fabulous number of things suitable. After a dozen years of film noir and tough detective films, one would have imagined that most of the angles would have been tried and worked to exhaustion, but PICKUP ON NOON STREET managed to be amazingly recent and new. It is also a multi-layered film. On one level, it is an espionage film, with federal authorities, with the relieve of local police in Original York, on the slide of a group selling secrets to the Communists. Interestingly, the collaborators are not treated as political individuals, but utterly unprincipled capitalists. As Joey, Richard Kiley’s character, puts it early in the film to his aged girlfriend Candy, “How many times do I have to whisper you we’re not criminals. This is astronomical business.”
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The film features a first rate cast. Except possibly for his shroud debut in KISS OF DEATH, Richard Widmark was never better than he was in this film as three-time loser pickpocket Skip McCoy. The ultimate anti-hero, McCoy’s motives are complex and opaque, even at the demolish. Jean Peters, later Mrs. Howard Hughes (to whom she was married from 1957 to 1971), is fetching as Candy, a shady dame with a past but with the proverbial heart of gold. Richard Kiley is suitably slimy as Joey, the seller of secrets to the Communists. Kiley would later (after his allege darkened) become the narrator for dozens upon dozens of National Geographic specials (such a familiar converse that they joke in JURAISSAC PARK about getting him to do the bellow over for their guided tour) . Thelma Ritter, as she did so often in the forties and fifties, steals every scene she is in as the necktie-selling, police informing Moe Williams, who is saving up for her gravestone and burial site (“If they buried me in potter’s field, it would unbiased ruin me”) .
The psychology of the characters comes straight from Mickey Spillane. A primary instance is the design Candy falls for Skip McCoy. This aspect of the film isn’t merely improbable: it is impossible. Skip picks her pocket. He causes her to go on a long search for him while paying off stoolies along the contrivance. He slugs her upon their next meeting when he finds her going through his things, robs her purse while she is unconscious, and then pours beer on her face to wake her up. After kissing her, he unceremoniously tosses her out on the street. When she returns, he kisses her some more, before pushing her down, taking all the money out of her purse, and then shaking her down for more money. And, of course, by this time she is hopelessly in treasure with him. In what universe is this possible? None, but for the sake of the drama we rep it effortlessly.
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The film is stuffed with grand details, whether dialogue, music, or sets. No one seeing the film could ever forget Skip’s bizarre waterfront lodgings, in which he cools his beer (and stores his booty) by lowering a wooden box into the East River with a rope. Among dozens of mammoth touches, one of my favorites is when a stoolie, eating Chinese food, takes his tip money and puts it in his pocket using chopsticks. The glean, by the relatively unknown Leigh Harline, nonetheless manages to be almost as edgy as Edward Hermann.
Interestingly, for all the film’s cynicism and edginess, it actually ends up with a more traditional pleased ending than most of the hardboiled crime films of the forties and fifties. The guy and the gal slay up together, and perhaps even elated. Moe tells Skip, “Finish using your hands, Skip, and originate using your head.” He does, and all ends well. By the extinguish, the awful guys are all either lifeless or in jail. What is arresting about all this is that it was a protest violation of the Code, which decreed that all characters who take in crime must be shown as paying for those crimes by the raze of the film (which is why all those Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney villains of the thirties always died by the slay of the film) . Skip McCoy is not only a gallop, he is a thief, yet at the demolish he is not only punished: he is given a tidy bill of health for cooperating in taking down Commies. As such, he is one of the most unusual anti-heroes of the age.
This is an absolute must-see film though I would like to add that for a Criterion film, this has perhaps the smallest number of honorable features that I can prefer. The print itself is pristine and beautiful, but you collect no additional video features. All the features are either articles or printed interviews.
The face of film noir wouldn’t have been the same without the distinctive face of Richard Widmark who exploded into the genre with his memorably over-the-top performance as baddie Tommy Udo in 1947′s Kiss of Death. For my money, however, it’s the underrated Victor Stale who really carries that film, although Widmark gets all the flashy scenes (his pushing of a wheelchair-bound Mildred Dunnock down the stairs is widely considered one of the cruelest in film history) .
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In Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1950) and Pickup on South Street, however, Widmark truly comes into his occupy with two of the finest film noir performances of all time. The stage trained actor had added some substance to the flash. You rep yourself sympathizing with the callous Skip McCoy (Pickup on South Street) and nervous Harry Fabian (Night and the City) despite their terrible qualities. There’s an underlying vulnerability late all the tough talk and rough gestures (the fact that Widmark looked so undernourished in the ’50s may have also had something to do with it) .
With the uncompromising Sam Fuller (Shock Corridor) at the helm and Thelma Ritter (All About Eve, Rear Window) in a scene-stealing supporting role, you can’t go inferior. An notable release for the film noir afficionado.
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