Politics and Economics in Pickup On South Street

I watched Sam Fuller’s great ‘’noir" again last night, along with the director’s charming self-explications in the extras that enrich the Criterion DVD. Leaning far left myself, I think I let the word “commie” get in my way the first time I viewed this several years ago, and I decided to ignore the film’s politics, taking it as a film of its time, in favor of the love story. . And that is not the most pleasurable way to view the film, nor does it give the film its due. I now see very clearly that this was an extraordinarily brave piece of film-making for 1953.

The story, to bring anyone who hasn’t seen it up to speed (although you might want to just watch it cold if you don’t know the story, in which case, stop reading now): A pickpocket (Richard Widmark) unwittingly lifts sensitive microfilm from a courier (Jean Peters) on her way, unknown to her, to deliver it to communist agents, who will presumably transfer it to the Soviets. Two FBI agents witness the theft, but the thief gets away before they understand what they’ve seen. They’ve been trailing the girl, but they didn’t expect an exchange on a crowded subway car. This theft sets the FBI and NYPD on one side and the communists on the other to retrieve the film. It also alerts the pickpocket to the great value of his serendipitous acquisition.

Having recently read J. Hoberman’s excellent An Army of Phantoms about Hollywood during the earliest years of the Cold War, I knew that Fuller and Zanuck had been chewed out over a lunch meeting by J. Edgar Hoover, who clearly understood what a dangerous film it was to the fucked up “Cold War effort” and to Eisenhower-era law and order generally. Here was a film that had a pickpocket, a stoolie, and a B-girl as its heroes—and the pickpocket has the audacity to tell the FBI guy appealing to his patriotism not to wave the flag at him. This must have been a shocking line in 1953. (It’s actually delivered as a disgusted question, “Are you waving the flag at me?”) Fuller says he wrote it as “the goddamned flag,” then “the damn flag.” The point being, Skip the the pickpocket doesn’t have any patriotism to appeal to. This is a whole ’nother ballgame from cold war weepies like My Son John.

There’s a lot to talk about here, but I just wanted to get the ball rolling as I think some more on it.

I was always confused by the folks who maligned what they saw as the movie’s streak of conservative right-leaning…I think Moe’s entire character is an example of someone for whom capitalism is BARELY working. Moe spends her days in what appears to be HELL on earth (a foundry perhaps, in the one shot we get of her “at work”) trying to hawk enough cheap ties so she can afford a grave. A FUCKING GRAVE. For when she’s dead. When she dies alone.

If her final lines aren’t a damningly critique of short-comings in post-war America, I’m not sure what they are: "Look, mister, I’m so tired you’d be doin’ me a big favor if you’d blow my head off. " (sorry, the 6 sites I checked the quote for each had different versions, so I’m not sure if this is verbatim, but it seems close).

Ben, that is indeed close enough to what she says, and it’s an excellent point. And this is the woman who can’t be bought for anything by the commies because she just doesn’t like them, that’s all. That also really leaped out at me this time.

These people are not political in the typical American sense—or any typical sense. They don’t respect the law. They don’t respect the market as a rational force. It’s more of a wheel of fortune for them. They’re lucky or they’re not. They don’t care who they’re trading with (usually) if they can get money out of them. That’s why Moe’s refusal to deal with the commie is a bit perplexing. Not to say it’s a problem for the film—not at all. It’s a problem within the film for the film viewer to grapple with though.

The conversations between the North Korean POW and the African American soldier in STEEL HELMET are pretty fascinating too, and, I always thought, pretty gutsy for a combat film of its time period.

I haven’t seen that. It’s on my list.

The whole movie’s fantastic. Check it out. I’m sure the Criterion release is great, too.

Sad to see that they finally put out PARK ROW in the US…but blew it with the release which is a DVD-R from MGM that not only has a bunch of reported glitches on Amazon reviews (such as being the entirely wrong movie on the PARK ROW discs) but also looks crappy according to DVDBeaver. Crud.

Ew, yeah. I hadn’t really payed attention to the MGM MOD titles, but that’s a shame. I saw it on TCM not all that long ago and it look pretty respectable. And WB’s MOD Verboten looks quite good—remastered and everything.

WB seems to have gotten this down. All the screengrabs I’ve seen from their archive releases are solid, sometimes excellent. But this malarkey with PARK ROW just makes me sad. Great, great film that has gone inexplicably unrepresented in the years since Fuller’s status has risen.

Yeah, it’s a tremendous film, and definitely one that warrants a proper release (or at least the assurance of actually getting the movie when you order the MOD). It’s too bad that the negative reviews on Amazon will no doubt discourage people from buying it that otherwise might, and the issue is one that has nothing to do with the film per se.

Pickup On South Street. Pickup On South Street. Pickup On South Street. Politics? Economics? Ain’t it obvious? It’s as propagandistic as 49th Parallel, but 49th Parallel has Lawrence Olivier dead in the first 30 minutes, and that’s a cinematic feat.

James, what seems obvious to me from that comment is that you haven’t given Pickup much thought. Or you might be kidding? What’s it propaganda for?

@James – it may seem that way to you if you’re judging it from a modern perspective, but the fact that the characters are more concerned with their immediate economic needs rather than the abstract ideas of country and patriotism are pretty radical. Reading Fuller’s autobiography, you get the sense that he tried to identify with the average person, or maybe even the person down on their luck and have the audience understand them. Since we have a modern perspective, we’ve already seen this handled in so many other films that came after this one.

If it were an act of sheer propaganda, would it focus on a thief and have sympathy for Candy or Moe? Sure, it comes with the baggage of the Cold War, but I seriously doubt a draft board would be showing this to new recruits.

If Fuller was a propagandist, then why would Godard embrace him so thoroughly?

Guys, I think he’s just trolling.

The microfilm is basically like one of Hitchcock’s macguffins. The movie is all about the characters – Thelma Ritter’s being the most unforgettable – and Fuller’s fantastic style.

House of Bamboo is another good Fuller film, seriously underrated.

I find the romance in HOUSE OF BAMBOO a bit forced, but it certainly is glorious on most accounts. Probably the best cinematography of all his films.

The real love crush is the Robert Ryan character’s on Robert Stack. Fuller discussed it with Ryan but they left Stack out of the loop because he was not too bright and might have been unhappy with that subtext.

HA! That’s great. Never heard that story.

I agree with Ben, 5 posts ago.

“The point being, Skip the the pickpocket doesn’t have any patriotism to appeal to. This is a whole ’nother ballgame from cold war weepies like My Son John.”

“These people are not political in the typical American sense—or any typical sense. They don’t respect the law. They don’t respect the market as a rational force. It’s more of a wheel of fortune for them. They’re lucky or they’re not. They don’t care who they’re trading with (usually) if they can get money out of them.”

“The microfilm is basically like one of Hitchcock’s macguffins. The movie is all about the characters – Thelma Ritter’s being the most unforgettable – and Fuller’s fantastic style.”

All of this, basically, exactly why I love this movie and movies like it. Moe’s bias against dealing with a commie is great because as political as it means to the VIEWER, to the character it is just part of the landscape of social assumptions… the lower and criminal classes spending all their time just trying to make ends meet and get a comfortable grave, they don’t have time to either be political OR question the overall propaganda against, in this era’s case, communism.

The whole “as the world does its political thing people necessarily live on and let their own lives go by” thing is sort of what I’m most interested in in terms of politicized meanings in narratives contrasted with character motivations. A typical use of a message film is to set a character’s motivations as indicting or justifying based on their past experiences towards how they treat the world politically—usually something as sappy and, I’m sorry, completely retarded as “Oh well he’s a conservative because he’s gay, and he’s gay because he was raped by his uncle as a child.” The stronger political films are the ones where the characters live under the politics, but have motivations much more defined to something residing outside of it—Cold War era movies defined as Cold War era movies (movies that deal in some way or another with the Cold War instead of setting the story outside or in absentia of the politics of the time) are best when the characters just want… a place to sleep. Somebody to love. It feels to me more real.

So referring back to the “flag waving” line, that’s indeed one of the central concerns between the microfilm Macguffin and the main character’s motivations: if anything, all these politics just get in the way of a pickpocket’s lifestyle, the overall beliefs in such things as economic or political livelihoods and gains are meaningless to a guy who has resided outside the law and thus counter to its interests for quite some time. The idea of appealing to his sense of patriotism to him is a waste of time—homeboy just wants a paycheck.

At least that’s what I like to focus on. I’m aware that there’s more to it than that, but it’s the part of the narrative that interests me the most. I relate it to Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day which is basically a story of a family of brothers caught in this huge historical situationist setting, with the changing politics, technology, economies, international trade, etc. and so on ad infinitum, who spend the greater part of 1000+ pages just trying to find something to do and a woman to sleep comfortably with. They do have an overarching goal of killing a specific aristocrat, but that goal comes from a sense of familial vengeance and honor than a real desire to change the world for the better, their statements to political goals underlining more their education and class than their actual intentions.

—PolarisDiB

^ Great post, DiB. I enjoyed this film when I saw it some years ago.

PolarisDiB, very nice essay on the film, right to the point.

I love the way Fuller underscores Skips’ smarts when Candy comes to offer him as much of the $500 Joey the communist gave her to bargain with (and leave her some dough for a dress). This is his big score, as Candy calls it later, and he’s not planning to waste the opportunity.

I was also intrigued by how much money Candy loses on her way to meet Skip for the first time. It practically falls out of her purse every time she turns. Easy come, easier go.

Tannhowser said: “The real love crush is the Robert Ryan character’s on Robert Stack. Fuller discussed it with Ryan but they left Stack out of the loop because he was not too bright and might have been unhappy with that subtext.”

Watched House of Bamboo last night with that subtext in mind. I think it would have come across even if I hadn’t read this comment. Gods, what a great, underrated, under-sung movie! Great performance by Ryan.