Sunday, August 16, 2009

Review: "Pickup On South Street" (1953)

This week Quentin Tarantino has a new movie coming out called Inglorious Basterds. I can't wait to see it -- it looks looks "ingloriously" over-the-top and entertaining.
Tarantino has always said that one of his favorite directors -- and biggest influences -- is Sam Fuller, who directed lots of movies and TV shows from the late 1940s until the mid-1990s. One of his very best movies, and one of the greatest New York City noir films ever made, is Pick Up on South Street from 1953.
Richard Widmark stars a petty criminal who, one morning on the subway, stealthily robs the handbag of a beautiful, troubled woman played by Jean Peters. What he steals turns out to be a lot more valuable than money -- it's a message for Communist spies. Now this thug has got both the cops and Commie agents coming after him, and he's in a world of hurt. Of course he ends up falling for the dame he robs, so besides the law and the Reds, he's also got woman trouble!
They just don't make movies like this anymore. Richard Widmark is so classy, so smart, so fast-talking and smooth, you just can't help rooting for him (he even wears a button down shirt and tie throughout the movie!). When he's not out robbing and conning, he lives in a small shack on the pier off South Street, where he keeps his beer in a pale that he lowers into and raises out of the water. Jean Peters is your classic noir femme fetale, a Barbara Stanwyck/Joan Crawford type, the kind of broad who men give up their lives for. The supporting actors are all wonderfully creepy and dimensional, especially Thelma Ritter who got an Oscar nomination for her performance.
And the NYC of this movie is like a living picture book. This is the New York City of your dreams, in black and white, of smart men and even smarter women, of crazy Jazz and automats, of flashing neon lights, of Studebakers and elevated subway lines, where no matter how sleazy a person was, they were always classily dressed. The South Street of the early 1950s is totally different than today. Back then, there weren't the giant glass office buildings or Battery Park. Instead, it was a shanty town of fishing shacks where even a lowlife could find a place to hang his hat (literally).
Best of all, this movie is fast-moving and short. It's pulpy-noirish feel is just thrillling, and you can understand how it would influence such a huge movie geek like Tarantino. So put Pick Up on South Street on your Netflix queue and go back to the New York of dreams.
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