Pickup on South Street ***** (1953, Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter) – Classic Movie Review 2069

Writer-director Samuel Fuller’s brutal 1953 hard-boiled Cold War spy film noir thriller is a little masterpiece of its kind, one of the cult film-maker’s great noir classics.

Richard Widmark stars at his arrogant, menacing snarling best as pickpocket Skip McCoy, a petty crook who gets mixed up in the spy game after he steals a wallet containing microfilm  of top-secret government information from Candy (Jean Peters)’ pocket on a crowded New York City subway train.

Candy is delivering an envelope as a final favour to her ex-boyfriend, Joey (Richard Kiley), thinking it contains stolen business secrets, and is unaware he is a communist spy. But the FBI is following Candy and government agent Zara (Willis B Bouchey) has her under surveillance, hoping she will lead him to the boss of the spy ring.

Professional informant Moe Williams (Thelma Ritter)  identifies Skip for a price to Zara, and manages to sell the same information twice when Candy contacts her for Skip’s address in order to rob his waterfront shack and get the envelope back. Moe is delighted at getting paid twice and knows her good friend Skip will not mind.

This is an exciting, provocative, macho 50s action thriller, atmospherically and imaginatively handled by an especially on-form director Fuller, with extremely strong, showy performances by Widmark, Peters and Oscar-nominated Ritter as the cynical seller of secrets, the quintessential ‘stool pigeon’. The support acting is outstandingly characterful and colourful, and Murvyn Vye, as the cynical police detective Captain Dan Tiger, is particularly good.

There’s plenty of darkness, brutality and a strong anti-communist message in Fuller’s extremely punchy and exciting screenplay, based on a story called Blaze of Glory by Dwight Taylor. Fuller completely changed the story about a woman lawyer falling in love with a criminal she was defending in a murder trial into a story of a lower criminal and his girlfriend that he called Pickpocket. When 20th Century Fox studio head producer Darryl F Zanuck thought the title too ‘European’, Fuller came up with his new title after memories of South Street from his days as a crime reporter.

Also featured in the movie are Milburn Stone, Henry Slate, Jerry O’Sullivan, Harry Carter, George E Stone, George Eldredge and Stuart Randall.

Fuller dithered over casting the female lead till  the Friday before shooting started on the Monday but was finally impressed with Peters’s intelligence, spunkiness and her different roles at the studio – and he liked the way she walked in a slightly bow-legged style he thought many prostitutes did.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover told Fuller and Zanuck that he detested Fuller’s un-American work, especially Pickup on South Street. Hoover objected to Widmark’s unpatriotic character, especially his line ‘Are you waving the flag at me?’ and the scene of a Federal agent bribing an informer. Zanuck backed Fuller but removed references to the FBI in the film’s advertising.

The movie was screened at Venice Film Festival in 1953.

The 20th Century Fox studio dug out Fuller’s script and got him to help rejig it in the Sixties as The Cape Town Affair.

The 33-year-old Richard Widmark was Oscar nominated as Best Supporting Actor in his screen debut in Kiss of Death in 1947

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2069

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