"I have to go on making a living so I can die."
De zakkenroller Skip McCoy ontfutselt de portemonnee van de mooie brunette Candy in een overvolle metro van New York. In Candy’s portemonnee zat ook een microfilm, die bestemd was voor haar opdrachtgever, de gluiperige communistische advocaat en ex-vriend Joey.
Pickup on South Street draait in 1 bioscoop in New York City - eerstvolgende voorstelling dinsdag 3 november om 20:00 in Film Forum.
Volgende voorstellingen: dinsdag 3 november.
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Speeltijden van Pickup on South Street, elke ochtend ververst
Kies je bioscoop en krijg een seintje voordat de film van het doek verdwijnt.
"I have to go on making a living so I can die."
Richard Widmark sneakily accessing the microfilm machine at the New York Public Library = me opening an Incognito browser window to view paywalled content.
The dirty New York reflects a nation’s paranoia. A feverish portrait of post-war America, where anti-communism flowed from headlines into fiction. At the height of McCarthyism, when any minimal and distinct change outside the “normal” could be read as a threat to the homeland, the director plunges us into an underworld of pickpockets and informants, where the foundations of patriotism are negotiable and ideology is a currency. The film in a way does not align with the rigid moralism of the time; it punches hypocrisy, revealing that the struggle between capitalism and communism, these two ideologies that in a way in small details, know how to read what happens in reality, but ultimately dissolves into the law of the smartest.Richard Widmark was a very smart choice, I loved it, with his cynical laugh and predators eyes, he embodies Skip McCoy, a pickpocket who, with a flick of his fingers, pulls from a bag what will be his passport to destruction and redemption: a microfilm. Jean Peters, whom I wasn’t familiar with, is incendiary as Candy, she’s an intelligent femme fatale, a survivor of the underworld. But it’s Thelma Ritter who steals the show, her Mo, an informant who sells secrets as if selling ties (lol), she's simply surreal, the only character who understands the real cost of betrayal. Fuller films all the actors with an almost documentary rawness, capturing every drop of sweat, every wrinkle carved by survival.The script is simple, but each scene is driven by a voracious need for survival, a choreography of betrayals, threats and low blows. The shadows mix with Fuller’s brutal realism, creating a rhythm that borders on hysteria: claustrophobic close-ups, sharp cuts, spit dialogues as if words were knives. Violence, when it comes, is fast and dirty, without glamour, there is no heroism, only necessity. A noir worthy of its time.— List: The Femme Fatale Legacy
Een cynische zakkenroller in New York steelt per ongeluk geheime microfilm bestemd voor communistische spionnen, wat ongewenste aandacht trekt van zowel federale agenten als criminele syndicaten.
Pickup on South Street werd in 1953 geregisseerd door Samuel Fuller, bekend om zijn rauwe, keiharde Amerikaanse misdaaddrama's.
Bekijk de lokale programmatie en beschikbaarheid voor Pickup on South Street op Mood.
