Review of Pickup on South Street (1953) by Nate A — 14 May 2008

Fuller's 'Pickup' is interesting in that it bravely engages with the conformism at the heart of American identity and film-making. It's a fine American B-grade film tradition, the insouciant "I don't give a shit and respect my freedom of speech". He satirises both cinema and American society in this savage attack on good taste, a film about the 'Red Menace' but really more focused on the McCarthyite menace of American anti-communism. It has all the ingredients of a typical Hollywood thriller, but turns the violence and irony knob to 11. The main character, despite his utter cynicism and disregard for any value-system whatever, somehow saves the day against the filthy Communists and gets the girl. Although replicating a more conformist trope of American vs. Communist, its irony and subversiveness means that neither side is privileged. Hurrah for self-conscious film noir; it's a B-grade masterpiece of social criticism.

On an amusing side-note, it appears that Bresson borrowed from Fuller's depiction of pickpockets working the train; the train as a site of criminality. I struggle to think of a more bizarre linkage in terms of directors.