Thanks for the memories!

Load of rubbish!!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A gritty dark movie directed by by Sam Fuller leads the viewer through a winding plot after a pickpocket steals and intercepts microfilm containing sensitive information from Candy, played by Jean Peters, destined to be shared by communist spies. The lowlife pickpocket Skip played by Richard Widmark, is an ace at eluding capture by police. Suspense ratchets up as Skip puts himself and Candy in harms way with the communist spies and the cops. With superb acting by Peters, Widmark and Thelma Ritter, this film is an awesome view and should be added to one of your top movies to see.

Arrogant smart aleck pickpocket Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) really picks on the wrong purse when he snatches a wallet from Candy (Jean Peters). Both of them had no idea that the wallet consisted a microfilm with top-secret government secrets meant for communist spies.Screenplay is masterfully written, right on the point stuff without too much unnecessary fat, characters are well developed, story flows so naturally that none of the twists and turns take too much focus on one singular moment. I guess Samuel Fuller's journalist background has something to do with it. Smooth and detailed direction with nice nuances and touches almost unnoticeable - scene where Candy discovers that her wallet is gone from the purse, an alarm goes off in the background.Richard Widmark is in his usual top form as arrogant pickpocket with heart at right place and Jean Peters is wonderfully natural as punching bag, but never just as damsel in distress. Thelma Ritter gives warm and interesting performance as street stoolie Moe (no wonder she received six Academy Award nominations including one for this role). Rest of the supporting cast deserves high recognition also without pointing anyone particular.With 'Pickup on South Street' Samuel Fuller's potential and craftsmanship as a director really came together and the result is well written, masterfully directed and magnificently acted smooth film-noir.

When a pick-pocket on his final strike steals from a woman in the subway, he quickly gets dragged into something much bigger than he expected. For some reason the police were watching his mark very closely so they saw him make his move – not to mention that the contents of the purse must have been very valuable since the mark (Candy) is very keen to get it back for the people she was carrying something for.On the face of it this film is a bit of a sop for those at the time looking to blacklist potential communists – and one way to avoid such accusations was to make sure and be in a film where commies are the bad guys. This could have meant a terribly simplistic film but here we have something that does rise above that, even if it is perhaps not as brilliant as people tend to say. The plot is good throughout but it is the tough tone, dialogue and performances that make it more than the sum of its parts. The narrative sees Candy trying to recover something from pickpocket Skip by using her feminine charms while other pressures start to build on both of them; this aspects of the film is probably the weakest since we do not have much time for anything genuine to start to come from her flirting – but yet the narrative demands that it does, so it does. The performances cover this up the best they can, but at times it doesn't convince even though it works when the "relationship" is a bit more exploitative or sexual in nature.The tough tone is what makes it, with some brutal moments combined with consistently tough and sharp dialogue. Ultimately it comes down to Commie beating, which is understandable, but up till then it is more than it could have been. Of course the cast helps since Widmark is always good and he is so here; he never really becomes a hero and even though he turns on the Commies, he never lets us think he is doing it with a flag draped around him so much as his own personal motives. Peters is very good as Candy, selling her very good looks and sexuality while also performing well in some more brutal scenes. Ritter is the standout though in what could have been an incidental character needed to move the plot along. Here Fuller's script gives her more to work with and she really makes the most of it, bringing a lot to her character and performance. As director and writer Fuller gets the tough edge right and I particularly liked the camera movement – incredibly close to the characters at times, unafraid to shoot a scene with one character blocking the other, and with good urgent movement in the action sequences.Pickup is not a perfect film but it is a very strong one – and for sure much stronger than an anti-communist genre piece could have been. The tough tone, performances, dialogue and direction all make it work very well, with pace and brutality adding to the value.

Due to its excessive brutality and sadistic beatings (especially the rough slapping around of pretty Candy), this rough'n'tough Crime/Thriller from 1953 ran into a lot of serious flak from the censors prior to its initial release.In order to appease the picky censor board's pointless grumblings, several violent scenes were quickly re-shot and even a "cutesy-pie", little happy ending was tacked onto the story for good measure.And because this film's theme dealt directly with Communist espionage on American turf, FBI agent, J. Edgar Hoover, even got into the act and complained to Darryl F. Zanuck (then head of 20th Century Fox) about the unpatriotic attitude of Richard Widmark's lippy character and his "Are you waving the flag at me?" line.Of course (as you can well-imagine), the whole controversy that all of this silly attention stirred up prior to "Pickup's" initial release did absolute wonders as a means of advertising and, thus, selling it to the curious movie-going public, and generating big box-office bucks.Pickup's story deals with the serious events that are set into motion after the brazen pickpocket, Skip McCoy, steals a wallet being carried by pretty, little Candy.Unknown to both Skip and Candy, this innocent-looking wallet actually contains a strip of microfilm of top-secret information that was being delivered to a group of ruthless Communist spies operating within the seedy underworld of NYC.Filmed in stark b&w, this hard-edged Crime/Drama had a running time of only 80 minutes. It was directed by Samuel Fuller whose other films from the 1950s included Forty Guns, Hell and High Water, and Underworld USA.