“Sometimes you look for oil, you hit a gusher.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046187/

Dir: Samuel Fuller

Runtime: 80 minutes

Genuine class from Warner Brothers, and a star turn from Richard Widmark.

He oozes sleazy charisma as three-time busted pickpocket Skip McCoy, a bum who dips in to one coat too many and winds up on the Government’s hit list.

It’s a fairly simple plot, as McCoy picks the purse of Candy (Jean Peters) he also unwittingly lifts a confidential top-secret microfilm that was being passed on by the woman’s consort, a Communist agent.

A police informer drops McCoy in it, and Candy does what female spies do best – tries to seduce him in order to get at the goods.

But like the viewer Candy becomes smitten with the cheeky thief and falls in love with him, failing to get the film back.

It’s not long before the heavies are on McCoy’s tail, and yet he still isn’t quite sure why.

He holds all the cards, even if he doesn’t realise just how big the stakes are, but how long can he hold out?

Widmark’s anti-hero is very special and would be a career defining role for most other actors, as he absolutely kills the part.

He’s a smirking, fast-talking con with big “who? little old me” eyes that dart around with a fiery intelligence.

There are actors who could talk out of the side of their mouths and convince you their lips were still, and Widmark is like that, he has the shifty patter down to an art.

Cinema was changing in the 1950s and here you can feel it; he is as criminal, and yet there is sympathy.

A lot of the characters we get behind operate on the wrong side of the tracks, and it is the genius of the director Sam Fuller that he pushes boundaries so far.

The Commie Red angle is given to us in full as the Cold War was heightened during this time, and America would have been very touchy, but there are aspects of character on show that would never have made it past the censors 10, or even five years previous.

We’re thrown into a world of liars, cheats, stoolies, thieves, the real pits of New York’s ends, and we love them.

It has all the snappy dialogue you’d expect from people living at the bottom with only their wits to guide them, and with Fuller directing his own script he gives it absolutely everything.

As expected Widmark has the best lines in the film but there are two wonderful female actors on show.

Thelma Ritter plays the seen-better-days informant Moe Williams with a brutal honesty.

Noir viewers are so accustomed to seeing either dashing, innocent wives or lusty femme fatales it comes as something of a (welcome) surprise to see such a key part given to an older woman.

She wears a hangdog expression throughout and her eyes are full of sadness; she’s no plot wallpaper and it only adds to the strength of the film having secondary characters who feel real.

And of course there’s Jean Peters as Candy.

Like Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, Gloria Grahame and so many others, it is this writer’s belief that the black and white screen makes female stars more beautiful than colour ever could.

She radiates trouble, charm, and natural beauty as the dopey girl sucked into a dangerous world of spies and thieves.

A great wonder of Pickup on South Street is the film seems to run on this charm; the quirky characters make everything move, and while there is a MacGuffin driving things all we really care about is the people.

Unusual use of close ups, very effective lighting and strange camera angles are cleverly used, and there clearly wasn’t much money floating about, but what a ride it takes you on.

Fuller gives some wonderful views of New York and makes the city seem the stuff of fantasy, it is cinema gold.

That is the beauty of film noir; The Big Combo was nowhere and at the same time everywhere, shot almost entirely in shadow, and Pickup on South Street can only be New York, but both lock us in to their dark and claustrophobic worlds with expert direction and cinematography.

This film is a gem, it rarely gets a mention on lists but is, no punches pulled, a mini masterpiece.