Pickup on South Street Criterion Collection

Before he directed low-budget B-movies, Sam Fuller was both a hard-nosed newspaper reporter and a World War Two combat infantryman. So it’s no wonder that his noir films were especially gritty and no-nonsense examples of the form. Pickup on South Street is one of his finest, a grim and multilayered tale of Red Scare politics smashing into the criminal underground. Richard Widmark gives the movie its cynical core as Skip, a pickpocket who steals a purse that, unknown to him, contains secret microfilm that both Communist spies and federal agents desperately want. Grifter that he is, Skip smells money and doesn’t much care whether he sells out to the Russkies or the government. Since this movie was made in 1953, it shouldn’t surprise you that the Commies are so sneaky and dishonorable that even garden-variety American lowlifes wind up detesting them. But Fuller was too sharp and sensitive to let his screenplay go the way of a meatheaded Spillane pulp story. Thelma Ritter is especially noteworthy as Skip’s stoolpigeon pal Moe, who justifies her life of crime in classic hardboiled style by complaining that she needs to earn enough to buy her place in the cemetery.