Pickup On South Street

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET [1953 / 2015] [Blu-ray + DVD] [Masters of Cinema] [UK Release]
No Punches Pulled! Nothing Held Back!  . . . In The Counter-Blast Against Communism!

''If you refuse to cooperate you'll be as guilty as the traitors who gave Stalin the A-bomb.'' ''Are you waving the flag at ME?!'' Samuel Fuller's sensational film noir casts a steely eye at America in the dawn of the Cold War, and brings 1950s New York City alive on the screen in a manner rarely equalled in the annals of film.

In one of his greatest roles, Richard Widmark plays Skip McCoy, a seasoned pickpocket who unknowingly filches some radioactive loot: microfilm of top-secret government documents. Soon after, Skip finds himself mixed up with federal agents, Commie agents, and a professional stoolpigeon by the name of Moe (played by Thelma Ritter in her finest role this side of ‘Rear Window’).

With its complex ideology, outrageous dialogue, and electric action sequences, Pickup on South Street crackles in a way that only a Sam Fuller movie can, and is widely considered one of the director's finest achievements. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, in a Dual Format special edition.

FILM FACT No1: Awards and Nominations: 1954 Academy Awards®: Nominated: Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Thelma Ritter. 1954 Venice Film Festival: Golden Lion Award for Samuel Fuller.

FILM FACT No2: ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ was screened at the Venice Film Festival in 1953. In 2018, ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Cast: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, Murvyn Vye, Richard Kiley, Willis Bouchey, Milburn Stone, Parley Baer (uncredited), Chet Brandenburg (uncredited), Virginia Carroll (uncredited),  Harry Carter  (uncredited), Clancy Cooper (uncredited), George Eldredge (uncredited), John Gallaudet (uncredited), Robert Haines (uncredited), Jay Loft-Lyn (uncredited), King Mojave (uncredited), Ray Montgomery (uncredited), Ralph Moody (uncredited), Roger Moore (uncredited), Jerry O'Sullivan (uncredited), Stuart Randall (uncredited), Alan Reed (uncredited), Henry Slate (uncredited), Ray Stevens (uncredited), George E. Stone (uncredited), Harry Tenbrook (uncredited) and Wilson Wood  (uncredited)

Director: Samuel Fuller

Producer: Jules Schermer

Screenplay: Samuel Fuller and Dwight Taylor (story)

Composer: Leigh Harline

Cinematography: Joseph MacDonald, A.S.C. (Director of Photography)

Image Resolution: 1080p (Black-and-White)

Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1

Audio: English: 1.0 LPCM Mono Audio

Subtitles: English SDH

Running Time: 80 minutes

Region: Region B/2

Number of discs: 2

Studio: 20th Century Fox / EUREKA Entertainment Ltd

Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: Samuel Fuller wasn't the type of director to beat around the bush, and his economic narrative style is highly evident in ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ [1953], one of the all-time great film noir pictures. A brutal examination of losers on the outer edges of society, the story revolves around the Communist underworld. But Fuller always insisted that ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ is apolitical, and he wasn't being disingenuous when he said it. Notice that the main characters – all of who are exceptionally unsavoury and only strike back against Communists when their own well-being is in jeopardy. They are simply looking out for themselves, regardless of who's victimizing them. In a lot of ways, this is a mean little film noire; Samuel Fuller isn't aiming to seduce anyone.

A hard-nosed tabloid newsman in New York before scripting B-movies in Hollywood in the 1930s, Samuel Fuller served as a much decorated infantry sergeant in North Africa and Europe during the Second World War. He returned to the cinema after the war, becoming a writer-director-producer, starting with I Shot Jesse James, a low-budget western questioning the nature of courage and hero worship. War films, noir thrillers and westerns were his forte, action films of visual power that combined nuanced social commentary with brutal directness. They confused middle-class critics the world over into thinking Samuel Fuller was a right-wing thug rather than a sensitive artist who sympathised with outsiders, losers and men in the street.

‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ was made at 20th Century Fox under the sympathetic eye of producer Darryl F. Zanuck during Samuel Fuller’s only time as a well-paid contract director. It’s a masterly film noir, released at the height of the red-baiting McCarthy era. In the brilliant opening sequence, set on a packed, sweaty Manhattan subway, a flashy woman Jean Peters has her wallet a strip of film containing priceless secrets, which she is delivering to Communist spies, is lifted by a pickpocket Richard Widmark, as two middle-class men look on. The next moment Richard Widmark is not the only person who studiously beats Jean Peters up, but her Communist playmate, Richard Kiley, knocks her around from time to time as well. Particularly does he abuse her along toward the end of the film, when he begins to suspect a slight betrayal? Miss Jean Peters is a sight with a black eye, not to mention assorted contusions here and there on her beautiful mug. Oddly enough, this is treatment that Miss jean Peters seems to adore. Jean Peters not only thrills to his caresses, of both sorts, but comes back for more.

Samuel Fuller hooks us into a complex moral web that never lets up. It takes us back to the angst-ridden 1950s but retains an enduring realism, and in one of her most moving performances of a blue-collar working woman Thelma Ritter was OSCAR® nominated as a sympathetic stool pigeon who sells underworld information to the cops but refuses to betray the whereabouts of a fellow minor criminal to the communists. The film’s realism, incidentally, is of a rather special kind. Samuel Fuller was much impressed by the neorealist pictures then coming out of Italy, and his film has a comparable rawness and authenticity. But Pickup on South Street was made almost entirely in Hollywood on sets designed by the versatile Lyle Wheeler. In France, where Samuel Fuller was soon to become a revered auteur, the fear that ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ might offend the then influential communist party led to the film being dubbed into French as Le port de la drogue and the villains becoming dealers in narcotics rather than agents of the Kremlin in Russia.

Samuel Fuller, a former newspaper reporter, often utilized recent headlines to add punch to his screenplays, and you couldn't get any hotter than Communists in 1953. He realised, however, that the average American didn't even know what a Communist was – they just knew that they were supposed to be appalled by their very existence. So he peppered ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ with the Red Menace without delving into what's supposed to be so menacing about it. “I had no intention,” Samuel Fuller later said, “of making a political statement in ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET,’ none whatsoever. My yarn is a noir thriller about marginal people, nothing more, nothing less.”

His intention, Samuel Fuller said, was to “poke at the idiocy of the cold war climate of the fifties.” Yes, he knew there were Communists who were fervent followers of Marx and Lenin, but his years on the newspaper beat taught him that there were people who would deal with literally anyone, so long as there was a decent payoff in the end. Not everybody, however, was convinced of Fuller's objective. Shortly after the release of ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET,’ the director and 20th Century Fox's production head, Darryl Zanuck, were actually summoned to a meeting at a high-end restaurant with J. Edgar Hoover!

When ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ was released in 1953 during an era where the cold war climate put an eerie chill over the United States, Samuel Fuller’s film jabbed at this absurd paranoia by representing characters whose motivations were more basic, more insignificant than politics or borders or top-secret formulas. Critics, however, interpreted the picture according to their own views. That the film refused to make an oblique, outspoken political commentary and yet concerned itself with an otherwise hot cold war topic earned it diverse readings. Some believed it a pro-communist, anti-American assessment. Others called it a welcomed anti-communist critique. Samuel Fuller insisted his film was just a story and only that: “My yarn is a noir thriller about marginal people, nothing more, nothing less.” By avoiding political statements in ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ and releasing a film about people without labels, Fuller sends a powerful message to those driving cold war obsessions or overtly political moviemaking. The director’s intentional lack of perceptible biased offers an individualist alternative to the grand stakes of a traditional studio film, thus he rebels against an era desperate to propagate its jealous Americanism. Standing on unpatriotic and certainly criminal grounds, the film sustains grit, intelligence, sincerity, yet still entertains in a way that challenges the viewer with ideas of humanism. Through this narrative about hoods just trying to survive, the picture permeates raw, volatile emotion onto the screen, fully characterising the elemental energy of Samuel Fuller’s cinema.

As good as Richard Widmark is, with his proto-Method grin, and Jean Peters, with her tawny, untutored naturalism, this is definitely Thelma Ritter's film, who transforms what could have been no more than a colourful eccentric to a figure of unshakable dignity. The dream Moe Williams works toward, a grave on Long Island rather than in a potter's field, is the movie's ultimate expression of confinement: deliverance as the respectability a better neighbourhood affords. Moe Williams describes herself as an old clock winding down, and watching Ritter, you feel as if you can see every step, every breath leeching the life out of her. Her exit, in which Samuel Fuller discreetly and devastatingly allows his camera to drift to Moe Williams's bedside Victrola and the needle going off the 78, recalls Truffaut's words about the famous bowling alley shooting in Scarface: “This isn't literature. It may be dance or poetry, but it is certainly “film noir” cinema at its best.”

Blu-ray Image Quality – ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ is framed in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, this is a very solid image transfer whose black levels are nonetheless just slightly soft, which this may seem a crime for a “film noir,” but it does preserve the detail in darker areas. At its best the contrast range is generous and pleasing, though just occasionally it does feel a little lacking in punch. The detail is generally crisp, with no picture movement in frame and hardly a dust spot to be seen. Facial close-ups and scene-setting wide shots in particular are impressive. Please Note: Playback Region B/2: This will not play on most Blu-ray players sold in North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Learn more about Blu-ray region specifications.

Blu-ray Audio Quality – The 2.0 Linear LPCM Mono Audio track is also in fine shape, the expected range restrictions not as treble-heavy as expected, the dialogue always clear and no background hiss or crackle to contend with. It is very easy to tell that the audio has been fully remastered. During the opening credits the music has excellent depth and there are absolutely no high-frequency distortions. Separation is also excellent and as a result random sounds and noises are very easy to identify and listen to the moving water as Jean Peters approaches Richard Widmark around the 37-minute mark. Clicks, thumps, background hiss, and crackle have been carefully removed. Finally, there are no audio dropouts or digital distortions to report in our review.

Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:

A Beautiful designed printed Blu-ray Cover, especially on the inside of the cover, with two rare Black-and-White posters.

New 1080p transfer of the film on Blu-ray from 20th Century Fox's stunning 4K restoration, with a progressive encode on the DVD.

Special Feature: Kent Jones on ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ [2015] [1080p] [1.78:1] [33:13] Here we have a new video interview with critic, filmmaker, and programmer Kent Jones. His first knowledge about the director Samuel Fuller was seeing for the first time ‘The Crimson Kimono’ [1959], when Kent was just 12 years old. He feels Samuel Fuller has a real connection, especially with down and outs, meaning real people, and totally encapsulated in the film ‘Pickup on South Street,’ especially being anti-communist films, especially when Richard Widmark says, “you waving the flag at me.” Kent also talks extensively about the actor Richard Widmark, who originally started out in the theatre, and especially a radio actor and had also a long contract with 20th Century Fox and came into film with the ‘Kiss of Death,’ and the director Henry Hathaway would constantly verbally abuse him, as well as the female actresses, that one told the direct he quit and walked off the set, but eventually Henry Hathaway apologised profusely to Richard Widmark and from then on became good friends. Kent Jones also praises the actress Thelma Ritter, who he classes as a genius and I second that. Kent Jones also praised Jean Peters and feels people do not recognise her talent enough and feels the actress Jean Peters was outstanding on ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET,’ which I also agree, but one surprise I found out and did not realise, is that Jean Peters appeared in the Marilyn Monroe film ‘NIAGRA’ and Kent says, “that is why people didn’t recognise it was actually her, because Jean Peters looks so different in that particular film, and again I still cannot remember  what character Jean Peters was in that particular film, and will have to have another look, to confirm this.” Kent Jones also comments on the film ‘PICKUP ON  SOUTH STREET’ where he states you are watching real Hollywood stars, especially Richard Widmark, Jean Peters and Thelma Ritter, plus he talks extensively about the style of the direct Samuel Fuller and how he films his actors faces, especially using lots of close-up facial of the actors and especially seeing all the perspiration on their faces, meaning physical proximity. Also Samuel Fuller did a brilliant job of portraying New York, when actually it was all filmed in Los Angeles, and especially as the film did not have a big budget. Samuel Fuller was very unusual, in that he was one of the post war writers/director in the wake of John Houston and Preston Sturges, who were the first real writers/directors, but also not forgetting Billy Wilder. We find out that Samuel Fuller under the direction of Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox and Samuel Fuller became a great auteur and flourished a great deal, and have been compared to the famous French director Jean-Luc Godard. Kent Jones again analyses on the filming technique of Samuel Fuller and the way he directs his films and especially the way he emphasises the close-up of the actor’s faces. So all in all, this is a very nice unique special edition of hearing Kent Jones opinions on the brilliant direct Samuel Fuller, and on top of all that, Kent Jones divulges a lot more information than I have stated in this review of this feature and is well worth a view. This special feature was filmed in New York on the 3rd March, 2015.

Special Feature: François Guérif Presents “Le Film Noir” on Samuel Fuller [2004] [1080p] [1.37:1] [23:23] Allerton Films [France] presents this black-and-white video interview with critic François Guérif [Author of “Le Film Noir Américan / Denoël Publishing, 1999] who is also the Director de la Collection Rivages and Noir. François Guérif talks about the common “film noir” themes in a number of American films such as ‘Double Indemnity’ and ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice,’ and the term “film noir” was coined in an article, which was published in 1946, and translates as: The term “film noir,” French for “black film” and first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unrecognised by most American film industry professionals of that era. Cinema historians and critics defined the category retrospectively. Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic “film noir” were referred to as melodramas. Whether “film noir” qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate among scholars. But François Guérif also states that the common theme running through these films is that there is always a protagonist who always got their comeuppance. Authors like Raymond Borde [b. 1920], founder of the Cinematheque de Toulouse, has written extensively on film history and Etienne Chaumeton was the film critic of the Toulouse newspaper La Depeche until his recent death, wrote that the direct origin of “film noir” came about via American authors like Dashiell Hammett who wrote the novel “Woman In The Window,” Vera Caspary who wrote the novel “Laura” and James McCann who wrote the novel “Double Indemnity,” and who again had something in common, as the revolt of the individuality, where identifying the culprit, but at the same time you have a disturbance, then there is an investigation, in that we can also call “hard-boiled fiction,”  but in order to have order restored, the reader or the cinemagoer has to be resurged that the good guys will win out right in the end. In the 1950s, the structure has to introduce a new theme, in other words, with film genre such as Gordon Douglas, who was an American film director, who directed many different genres of films over the course of a five-decade career in motion pictures. He was a native of New York City. When Samuel Fuller did his first film genre, ‘I Shot Jesse James’ [1949] and he was able to update the meaning of “film noir” and especially with his film ‘House of Bamboo’ [1955] that shows different aspects and cultures between America and Japan. François Guérif thinks that the film ‘USA Underground’ [1961] is definitely the film that you can say has that “film noir” genre. François Guérif talks about ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ and explores the fact that Samuel Fuller went to Daryl F. Zanuck to pitch the idea for the film and stated, “the main characters will be sleazy like characters,” but Daryl F. Zanuck says, “why on earth would you put this scenario in,” and Samuel Fuller explains that it is a way of taking the audience to part of the city where these characters hang out, because it is a film that offers no certainty and the characters do not act like normal people and there is total social realism in a world we previously had not seen before, and of course Daryl F. Zanuck was hooked and was very excited by the description of the film. Also what Samuel Fuller was able to film, especially only using studio facilities, especially the street scenes, so if there is a car chase; he would be in complete control. So he introduced and got actual film sets built, which he was delighted by the results. François Guérif says that it wasn’t until 1995 or 1996, it showed how the poor in Americans that were characterised in films in general, whereas Samuel Fuller decided to go in a different direction, but François Guérif says that he doesn’t know of any other films that ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ can compare. So ends this special feature and what a very frustrating view it was for me, because François Guérif talks in French and you get English subtitles, that is supposedly being translated word for word in English, but they are not being translated into coherent English, and that is such a shoddy unprofessional attitude, as a lot of words were not being translated and it became very disjointed and on top of all that François Guérif rambled on far too much and as far as I am concerned, he has a slightly typical air of French air of superiority and also has a slight touch of the pompous French Parisian elite attitude. I personally found it hard going, especially when the sentences are totally disjointed and some words again are totally missing. So if ever I put this Blu-ray on, I will definitely give this special feature a miss and now I have to go and lay down in a darken room to recuperate from this very frustrating poor excuse for a special feature, and it would have been loss to EUREKA to have not included this special feature onto this Blu-ray disc.

Special Feature: FULLER [1982] [480i] [1.37:1] [11:42] This special feature is brought to you by a French Television Company excerpt that was broadcast on 26/06/1982, where we actually get to meet in person the director Samuel Fuller in an unknown viewing room. Here we find Samuel Fuller sitting in front of a film editing moviola machine and explaining the different aspects to his film ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ and now and again he would stops the film where his name appears at the start of the film, where he explains he wrote the script, but also mentions Dwight Taylor who wrote the novel and neither of them ever met up, but because Samuel Fuller was not happy with the novel, he pitches his view of how the film should look to Daryl F. Zanuck, to give a much better storyline, that the angle is on the life of the pickpocket. Samuel Fuller talks with great affection about subways, which we in the UK call an Underground, and stops the film where we see the subway train and in reality he could not film in the new York Subway, because it would of cost $5 million a day and on top of all that, he could not film in secret, as he would not of been in control of the shoot, and Samuel informs us that the Subway scenes were actually built in the film studio and all the scenery could be moved when required, so that he could get lots of tight intimate shots, but most important, it had to look like an actual New York Subway. He talks about Richard Widmark character and how he would operate as an actual pickpocket in a subway carriage, which by the way does not actually move, Samuel Fuller asked all the actors to move as though they were on a real subway carriage. Now when Samuel Fuller shows the outside shots in the film, he actually mentions this was shot in Los Angeles, that is supposed to look like New York, and the building Jean Peters goes in is an actual building. But at that point in this special feature, you suddenly get a freeze frame informing it was filmed in Paris and suddenly without warning it suddenly stops and I am sure there must be a longer version somewhere. By the way it is in English with French yellow subtitles.

Theatrical Trailer [1953] [480i] [1.37:1] [1:47] This is the Original Theatrical Trailer for ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET,’ that was specifically made for the American cinemagoer, because the announcer is giving it a typical over the top presentation.

BONUS: EUREKA Entertainment Ltd has produced a fantastic 28 page BOOKLET, featuring a new essay on the film ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ by critic Murielle Joudet that has been translated from the French text by Craig Keller [2015]. It has 4 different sections, which are titled as PICKPOCKET by Murielle Joudet; FULLER ON THE FILM by Samuel Fuller [2002] which is an extract from Samuel Fuller’s magnificent 608 page memoir “A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking;” NOTES ON VIEWING,” which goes into great detail explaining the right aspect ratio of the film you view on the Blu-ray and DVD; an finally you have BLU-RAY & DVD CREDITS.” Plus you get some really nice rare Black-and-White images.

Finally, ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ was the fourth in a three-year dynamite run of films for Samuel Fuller, and in the quality of its execution and its effectiveness as screen entertainment it's right up there with its immediate predecessors like ‘The Steel Helmet,’ ‘Fixed Bayonets!’ and ‘Park Row’ as one of his best. His staging of both the drama and action is an object lesson in waste-free, film-crafted storytelling, and is peppered with his trademark use of close-ups and long takes, but this time around he saves his showpiece sequence for the climax, as Skip and Joey slug it out in a subway station in what for my money is one of the most electrifying screen fights in American cinema. In one of his greatest roles, Richard Widmark plays Skip McCoy, a seasoned pickpocket who unknowingly filches some radioactive loot: microfilm of top-secret government documents. Soon after, Skip finds himself mixed up with federal agents, Commie agents, and a professional stoolpigeon by the name of Moe Williams played by Thelma Ritter in her finest role this side of ‘Rear Window.’ With its complex ideology, outrageous dialogue, and electric action sequences, ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ crackles in a way that only a Sam Fuller film can, and is widely considered one of the director's finest achievements. “The Masters of Cinema Series” is proud to present ‘PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET’ on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, in a Dual Format Special Edition. Highly Recommended!

Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado 
Le Cinema Paradiso 
United Kingdom