Directed by:
Samuel FullerScreenplay:
Samuel FullerCinematography:
Joseph MacDonaldComposer:
Leigh HarlineCast:
Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, Murvyn Vye, Richard Kiley, Willis Bouchey, Milburn Stone, Parley Baer, George E. Stone, Stuart Randall (more)Plots(1)
"If you refuse to cooperate you'll be as guilty as the traitors who gave Stalin the A-bomb". "Are you waving the flag at ME?!" Samuel Fuller's sensational film noir casts a steely eye at America in the dawn of the Cold War, and brings 1950s New York City alive on the screen in a manner rarely equalled in the annals of film. In one of his greatest roles, Richard Widmark plays Skip McCoy, a seasoned pickpocket who unknowingly filches some radioactive loot: microfilm of top-secret government documents. Soon after, Skip finds himself mixed up with federal agents, Commie agents, and a professional stoolpigeon by the name of Moe (played by Thelma Ritter). With its complex ideology, outrageous dialogue, and electric action sequences, Pickup on South Street crackles in a way that only a Sam Fuller movie can, and is widely considered one of the director's finest achievements. (Eureka Entertainment)
(more)Reviews (2)
Directed at a relentless pace, this noir entertains above all in the way it deftly uses the role of the femme fatale to weave together the three sides of the male conflict, and in the way it violently brushes her off, making her a tool of the others for most of the runtime. I didn't like the romantic line at all, it looked very unrealistic, but on the other hand, I really liked Jean Peters's face and the dramatically escalated rhythm of the narrative, with the pocket-picking motif imaginatively incorporated and punctuated. The good old-school.
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A quite intense film noir, fairly fast-paced, that won't let you catch your breath and you will enjoy it until the end as a journey towards something quite dark. An interesting concept of how easily one can lose something important, and the consequences it can have on people who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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