Nobody, but nobody made rougher, tougher, pulp-ier, bloodier noirs than writer-director Sam Fuller, whose experiences as a tabloid crime reporter and World War 2 veteran permeated his films.....(see our 'The Steel Helmet' post on 5/28/20)
"Pickup On South Street" is quintessential Fuller.......raw, angry, violent and populated with a whole cast of characters workin' on their last nerve........
While villains in Fuller movies were especially evil and debased, he redefined the people who served as his 'heroes'......they often lived on the outer edges of society and behaved according to their own moral codes.....not necessarily society's.
Professional New York pickpocket Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark, at top of his sneering, snarky game) plucks a wallet from the handbag of streewalker Candy (Jean Peters, made up like an exhausted inflatable woman)......
Little does Candy know her ex-boyfriend (Richard Kiley) is a Red and the one last favor he asked her to do involved delivering spy photos of top secrets to his fellow Commies for transport to Russia......
And once Skip discovers he's inherited the photos out of Candy's wallet, Kiley's on the hunt for him, and the FBI's climbing all over him, as well as his hated nemesis, Capt. Tiger of the Pickpocket Squad (Murvyn Vye).......
Skip smirks at the Feds' patriotic appeals to help them out. No flag waver, he's out to extort the commies for 25,000 bucks in return for the photos.......until an unlikely romance with Candy gets in the way.......
In true Sam Fuller fashion, melodramatic events spew out at maximum speed, including the pathetic plight of police stoolie Moe, (Thelma Ritter, collecting yet another of her many Oscar noms). The bedraggled, world weary Moe, caught in the plot's lethal crossfire of cops, commies and crooks, only hopes to save up enough money to bury herself properly
........which in this movie, tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fuller heats everything up to the full boil you'd expect in this story, finishing it off with subway fist fight that's about as brutal as any Hollywood film could get away with in 1953.....and then some.
Never, never pass up a chance to see this gem........for pure noir goodness, Sam's the Man.........a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.
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