The Hardest Noirs: Pickup on South Street

Victory of the low lifes

Writer/Director Samuel Fuller began his life as a 17 year old crime reporter for the New York Evening Graphic newspaper. This would serve him in a later career as a pulp writer turned screenwriter for Hollywood. Pickup on South Street may be his best example of this.

The South Street neighborhood would have been familiar to Fuller, as it was not one of New York City's more pleasant areas. A Federal Writer's Project scribe described it as follows:

"On mild sunny days the drifters sit along the docks with their "junk bags", share cigarette butts, and stare endlessly into the water. In winter they cluster in little groups about small bonfires; many sleep at night in doorways with newspapers for covering. Other join the homeless men who sleep in the Municipal Lodging House, Annex No. 2, in the old ferry shed at the foot of Whitehall Street, which can accommodate about 1,200 nightly."

Pickup on South Street relies heavily on the lowlife atmosphere of its setting, even though it was filmed 3,000 miles away.

New York pickpocket Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) steals the wallet of subway rider Candy (Jean Peters). Unknown to Widmark, Peters was carrying top-secret stolen microfilm for a former boyfriend (Richard Kiley), unaware of what was in the envelope he handed her. Government agents tailing Peters witness Widmark's crime, but he slips away from them. The Feds are racing against the clock, fearing that if the microfilm winds up back with its intended target, it will disappear from the country.

The Feds go to the local police to identify the thief, and eventually Widmark is brought in for questioning, but the authorities are unable to pin anything on him. They switch their focus to Peters, convincing her to track Widmark down and try and either find the microfilm or get evidence on him for leverage. With the help of local informer Moe (Thelma Ritter), she locates where he is holing up. While searching his waterfront shack, she is surprised by Widmark, who knocks her out. He wakens her by pouring beer on her face and toys with her before sending her back to Kiley with his price for the microfilm.

The rest of the film is a cat and mouse affair between Widmark, Peters and Kiley, with Ritter caught in the middle. A desperate Kiley turns to violence, with tragic results. The microfilm changes hands several times and the film climaxes back in the subway with a fight to the finish between Widmark and Kiley.

Like any good Noir, the police in Pickup on South Street are largely ineffectual. The Feds following Peters lose Widmark and are forced to turn to the local police for help, who in turn, have to rely on a stool pigeon to identify him. They spend most of the movie staking out or following Widmark, lazily hoping that somehow he might lead them to the Communist spy ring. Meanwhile the Macguffin microfilm remains un-recovered and the known suspects wander free. It's Widmark who delivers justice to Kiley at the film's climax, not the authorities.

This lack of focus on effective law enforcement (which apparently pissed off FBI Director Hoover) works to the advantage of the movie, as it instead focuses on the low rent characters that circle around the microfilm: the thief, the floozy, the informer, and the Commie flunky. This is where Fuller really shines.

Widmark is incandescent in Pickup on South Street. This is a young and vital Widmark, who swaggers through every scene he's in: sneering, flashing insolence and coiled anger. In his scenes with Peters, he is both seductive and scornful, pushing all the right buttons for her damaged character. Every now and then, he flashes that devilish Tommy Udo smile. In a key final scene, where he realizes that Peters has taken a savage beating to protect him, you can see in his face the point where his resolve to stick it to the man melts and he is transformed into a figure of justice.

Multiple, big-name actresses were considered for floozy part, including: Marilyn Monroe, Shelley Winters, Betty Grable, and Ava Gardener among others. Fuller rejected them all in favor of Peters, in part because the way she walked reminded him of real-life prostitutes he knew from his newspaper reporter days. His choice turned out to be brilliant, not so much because Peters delivered a superior performance, but because her unglamorous appearance and needy delivery perfectly suited a character whose checkered past (probably a prostitute?) leaves her vulnerable to powerful and violent men.

The real standout of Pickup On South Street, however, is Thelma Ritter, who was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role. She plays Moe the informer with real pathos, a low level scrounger whose main motivation is to save enough money for burial outside of Potter's Field. Just before she is killed by Kiley for failing to give up Widmark's location, she delivers a heart-wrenching soliloquy about how tired of life she has become and how much of a struggle it is for her to get out of bed every day and press onward.

An early version of the screenplay was rejected by the Production Code Authority: "by reason of excessive brutality and sadistic beatings, both of men and women." A revised version was submitted a few weeks later, which was also rejected for the scene where Peters is beaten by her boyfriend. Eventually the script was approved, but there are no records of re-shoots and the scenes where Peters is beaten and Widmark chases and beats Kiley at the film's climax both remain brutal and unsparing.

Fuller supplies plenty of street slang and hard-boiled dialog for all these great characters. My favorite line, delivered by Widmark after coming up for air after necking with Peters: "Sometimes you're looking for oil and you hit a gusher."

There are no Noir staples in Pickup On South Street like deep shadows, expressionistic lighting, or brooding, wet streets. Instead, masterful work by Fuller's crew replicated the seedy side of New York on Fox back-lots, grounding the film rather than elevating it into artsy psychological territory. That's okay, I'll take gritty crime with seasoning of violence over poetry any time.