The Cinematheque

“His best film … Fuller is typically enthralled by material that Stevens or Capra would consider hopelessly drab … Reminiscent of Diane Arbus’s camera eye, her obsession with picking up the down side of American life.”

Manny Farber, Artforum

Journalist-turned-filmmaker Samuel Fuller’s predatory world of cops, thieves, spies, and informants still looks like the wild, cutting edge of B‑movie artistry. Maybe it’s pure pulp fiction, but it’s also been framed as a precursor to Robert Bresson’s transit pickpockets, or (according to Fuller himself) the look of Italian neorealism transplanted to Hollywood’s New York. Detested by both Georges Sadoul and J. Edgar Hoover, Pickup on South Street​’s plot concerns the contents of the purse belonging to Candy (Jean Peters) that professional thief Skip (Richard Widmark) has recently grabbed: microfilm en route to a communist spy, courtesy of Candy’s opportunist ex. ​“I wanted to take a poke at the idiocy of the Cold War climate of the ​’50s,” Fuller said. His vision of the time is propelled by kinetic, bruising action; his allegiance lies with his characters. Thelma Ritter, as stool-pigeon Moe, earned an Oscar nomination for her supporting role.

“The most claustrophobic American film before Psycho [and] the finest distillation of [Fuller’s] tabloid sensibility … Fuller cares less about his picture’s ostensible Cold War politics than about how Skip and Candy and Moe have been sealed off by society’s fixed perceptions.”

Charles Taylor, The Village Voice