"Pickup On South Street" + Cold & Rainy

Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,

This blog has turned into The Movie Report of late, as there hasn't been much else to mention, and so tonight's movie was another Noir, "Pickup On South Street" (1953) from Criterion and directed by the hard-boiled Sam Fuller. The movie opens inside a subway train. Noir stalwart and all-time movie tough guy Richard Widmark is a pickpoket with his eye on Jean Peters. As is universally known, New York subways are sardine cans. Peters and Widmark are sardined next to one another and he deftly steals her wallet from her handbag while acting nonchalant.

Little does he know that in her wallet is an envelope with some film negatives of classified United States Defense Information, some kind of mathematical formulae that Peters is smuggling to an infiltrating Communist agent on behalf of her Red boyfriend Richard Kiley.

Most Noirs didn't play politics, but this is Samuel Fuller, who often added social themes, and this was the height of the Cold War.

Still, the Commie theme is really only a subplot. The main story is pure Noir. Peters' boyfriend forces her to track down the pickpocket, whom the police and Federal agents are also looking for. She finds Widmark, and of course falls in love with him. How he turns out to be the Good Guy is a bit convoluted........now wait a minute.........didn't I mention that in last night's film review? Or maybe it was the night before last. Anyhow, this is Noir, so it's okay if all the films have basically the same plot, haha.  :) The rest of the film centers around Peters and how she tries to negotiate the dangers of her relationship to Widmark, and the problem of her boyfriend being a Commie traitor, and the cops being after all of them.

Jean Peters was very good in this film. She had a brief movie career and then went on to marry Howard Hughes, who was in those days the world's richest man. Richard Widmark was great in every film he was ever in, so that goes without saying here. The rest of the actors are Noir regulars, and when you watch several in a row, as I have this week, you see at least a few of the same faces in more than one film.

Noirs, including "Pickup On South Street", are always shot in excellent black and white, and Fuller did a great job in capturing the grittiness of the New York wharf, where much of the action takes place. The film clocked in at 80 minutes, and that's another thing I love about Film Noir : no wasted time. I love 90 minute films, because you get in there, you tell your story, and you finish it. And, if you have a good script, you can have a million things happen in between, and still not make the film feel as if it is being rushed.

The trick is a good script and good direction, knowing when to cut a scene, knowing how to edit to keep the flow going. But you can do a ton in 90 minutes, and for many film styles, that time limit works well.

I hope all is going well for you. Out here, it is cold again and raining. We are actually above normal in our rainfall since October, the first time that's happened in at least five years......

That's all for tonight. Post if you get a chance. See you in the morn.

I Love You.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)