Samuel Fuller Auteur: PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET

“You cannot force people to love one another, to think in the same way. You cannot make them, and I’m delighted. I love confusion, I love conflict, I love argument. If the whole world believed the same thing – imagine a world inhabited only by women or men, it would be terrible. Even if you’re right, you have no right to impose your way of thinking on me.”
(Sam Fuller qtd in Garnham 117-118)

1. PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1952)
-this is Fuller’s sixth feature as a Director

-he wrote the script from a story by Dwight Taylor, but Fuller himself says, “Once again this was my original.” He completely rewrote the original story idea.

-the film is ostensibly an early 50s anti-Communist film. Hollywood made many of these films at the time, some obvious such as John Fellows’s BIG JIM MCCLAIN, and some less obvious such as Don Siegel’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.

- the story is a somewhat melodramatic account of a one-time prostitute and a low-life pickpocket falling in love.

-where to place the film in terms of genre? What to say about its style? What to say about its characters? What to say about its various images? What to say about its vision of life? What makes it a “personal” film?

Genre: PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET is a small programme feature that fits into the genre the French critics labeled “cinema noir” or black cinema. The term “cinema noir” serves several purposes.

Cinema Noir:
First, the word “noir” refers to the fact that these low budget films were shot in black and white.

Second, these black and white films were “noir” because much of the action takes place at night, and the streets of the city are dark and deeply shadowed. As well, interiors are often dark and shadowed. Darkness pervades these films.

Third, “noir” refers to the significance of the dark streets and interiors. By “significance” I mean the vision of human life is generally dark and bleak in these films. These are films in which a sort of social Darwinism is at work – survival of the fittest where fittest means, the one most able to manipulate the system or overpower others. Characters live lives of claustrophobia, trapped in the naked city.

Fourth, “noir” may refer to both a style and content. The style is evident partly in the use of black and white, back lighting and localized lighting, and stark contrasts, especially in the use of shadows. But style also refers to an insistent camera – I mean by this a camera that situates itself askew, not quite anamorphically, but certainly at noteworthy angles.
-in PICKUP, we note that the camera more often than not looks at the actors either from above or from below, but relatively rarely from eye level. It also moves close to faces, sometimes uncomfortably close. We can see beads of perspiration or the discolouration of skin because of bruises or cuts. The close-ups in Fuller’s films point forward to the operatic close-ups in the films of Sergio Leone. Fuller also uses fades where one image remains on the screen for a few seconds while a second image is superimposed on it. The overlap suggests the strange cause and effect rhythm of his world.
-as for lighting, we have many very dark scenes in this film. A few times we see a face and perhaps a form emerging out of the darkness like an ominous shadow or darksome figure, reminding us of the night’s dangers. The world, and especially the world at night, hides many threats and secrets. In this film, we have the running motif of “shadowing,” people being followed and watched.
-content: “noir” usually takes for its setting the city. The city itself is a character in these films; it is harsh and brutal. The concrete streets and buildings reflect the hardness of life itself. Themes of betrayal, murder, mystery, intrigue, and the cheapness of life itself return in film after film. Corruption is also always evident. Sometimes it is difficult to tell the bad guys from the good guys. The world is, in effect, a masculine world in the sense that the films focus on men, usually single men, who inhabit a dark underworld (in both the criminal and spiritual senses). Women in the noir world are usually either long-suffering innocents who need the strength of a man to protect them or they are variations on the femme fatale, women as tough as men who draw unwary men to their doom (Fuller’s women are not the stereotypical noir women, as we will see).
-even when noir films end “happily,” we can sense the fragility (maybe even the falseness) of such endings. The noir world is deeply flawed, closer to tragedy than to comedy. The shooting of Candy in PICKUP is a case in point. It is a shock when the apparent main female character appears to be killed. This scene looks forward to the end of Fuller’s FORTY GUNS where the hero shoots his own lover in order to get the bad guy who is holding the woman as a human shield. Fuller likes to shock, and to overturn expectations and conventions.
-the noir leading man – not a hero in any traditional sense – usually finds himself trapped in the city. The city becomes a labyrinth. At the heart of this labyrinth is the minotaur, the monster, death itself. The noir hero finds himself surrounded by death and sometimes even facing and experiencing death. Dying well becomes a focus of these films.
-the trapped man unable to extricate himself from a web of intrigue is not only a noir feature. Hitchcock’s films obsessively return to this motif (39 STEPS, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, etc.), but Hitchock’s trapped man is an innocent. The noir hero is never innocent. He is part of the sleaze, part of the city’s detritus (see Aldrich’s magnificently sleazy KISS ME DEADLY).
-innocence is, for the most part, absent from noir. Another way of putting this is to say that noir films rarely have a clear binary of bad/good. In PICKUP, for example, we have the police and the feds in conflict with the Commies. We might think the binary goes like this: Police and Feds are good/Commies are bad. But Fuller complicates this by placing Candy and Skip between the two institutional forces (representatives of two forms of government). Twice in the film we have the line about “waving the flag,” both times spoken derisively. The police with their panopticon tactics are hardly more admirable than the commies with their underhand and violent ways. Both the police and the Commies are night creatures, watchers, and willing to do what it takes to accomplish their ends (twice Skip has been arrested and at least on one of these occasions he was brutalized by the cop, Tiger).

Style: as I say above, style has to do with camera angles, set-ups, and lighting. Noteworthy are low and high angles, and also establishing shots that work thematically. Think of the bird’s-eye shots of cops getting out of cars or high angle shots of characters crossing streets or the establishing shot of Skip’s shack on the water. The camera serves to remind us of a fate that quite literally hangs over the characters. They are being observed and tracked and not simply watched in a neutral manner. Or think of the twice-used establishing shot of the subway careening through the night (see Subway below).
-by “fate,” I refer to the way the plot unfolds: one rather causal act leads to a series of events that include murder and near murder. Skip “innocently” steals from a woman’s purse on the crowded subway car; this is something he has done countless times before. But this time is different from previous times. The woman is oblivious to the robbery, but both she and, consequently, Skip are observed by the authorities. What follows is a series of events inevitable once the initial act has occurred. Candy discovers that she has been robbed; the police lose track of Skip. And so Moe comes on the scene. Moe informs on Skip, and so the inevitable trail of crime follows. The only thing that interrupts the necessary fate (death to all who cross either the Commies or the police) is a redeeming act, an act of love. One such act is Moe’s refusal to tell Joey where Skip lives. Another such act is Skip’s retrieval of Moe’s body so he can give her a proper burial. A third example of a redeeming act is Candy’s lie to the cops that Skip has fooled the commies and is, in effect, helping the police. She nearly dies for this act of kindness.

Characters:
Captain Tiger (Murvyn Vye) is a cop on a mission to clean up the low-life in his city.
Skip (Richard Widmark) is a professional pickpocket and a loner. He lives by his wits and by his delicate hands. Candy says that he has the hands of an artist. How did he become the person he is? “Things happen,” he says. His redeeming act is burying Moe.
Candy (Jean Peters) has been Joey’s girl. Clearly, she is the kind of woman who is willing to use her sexuality to get what she wants or needs. She has not had a very savory life.
Moe (Thelma Ritter) is an informer who pretends to be a tie salesperson. She makes most of her money by selling information, information she gathers on her rounds selling ties on the streets. She wants enough money to have a proper burial plot with headstone. If she died and was buried in Potter’s Field, “it would kill her.”
Joey (Richard Kiley) is a petty thug, caught up in what he calls “big business,” not criminality. He is trapped by his deal with the Commies.

Where these people have come from is not stated, but clearly they have all lived lives on the edge. They have not come from a wealthy New Jersey suburb. They are products of the hard city streets. They survive by their wits, using any means available to them.

Images:
Subway: inside it is crowded, close, filled with small stories we will never know about. The opening scene establishes the themes of claustrophobia, surveillance, criminality, happenstance, and fate. Outside, the fast-moving subway signifies lives lived on a fast track to death.
Shack: isolation. The shack sits on water, an indication of the less than stable foundations of life, or at least the life of a guy like Skip. His life is rudimentary, without electricity or the comforts of home. Here in a huge modern city, we have a guy who lives in a shack without running water or electricity.
Neckties: the necktie is a nice visual pun. So much that these people do amounts to an invitation to a neck-tie party. The ties also remind us of etiquette, decorum, the façade of fine dress.
Newspapers: Fuller went to work for a newspaper at the age of 15. His films are “ripped from the headlines.” The sensational is the stuff of a certain kind of journalism, and Fuller’s films delight in the sensational. The film opens with Skip using a newspaper to conceal his theft. The paper is a cover only; he doesn’t really read it. The same is true when he goes to the Library to read microfilm. He pretends to read the newspaper.
Ropes and Pulleys: such as the rope that Skip uses to pull up his carton of beer. Like the necktie, the rope reminds us that if you give someone enough of it, he or she will hang himself or herself.
Film Strip: the much sought after item. This is the treasure
Purse: how many times does Skip rifle Candy’s purse? The purse is a place to keep things safe, but it proves to be completely vulnerable.
Windows, alleyways, shadows: people peer from windows, lurk in shadows, hide in alleyways. These places remind us of surveillance, the ever-seeing eye of the enemy.

Life:
Harsh, brutal, and short.
A Hobbesian view of life. Life lived in the belly of the whale.
The alleys and windows and shadows hide the enemy. For Fuller, the most formative experience of his life was his stint in the infantry during World War 2; his unit was the Big Red One. We might say that all Fuller’s films are war films (he made several films about war). Life is a battlefield in which trust is precious and also rare; it must be earned.

Moe and Skip have, perhaps, the defining relationship. Each is prepared to do just about anything to get what they want, to survive. Skip knows Moe informed on him, but he also know that this is how she survives. He cannot blame her for making her living anyway she can in this miserable world.

Violence: Fuller has said that he hates violence, but his world is a violent place. He hates violence, but he acknowledges the fact of violence. And in his films, violence has a visceral impact. Fights are brutal; we see blood and bruises. Violence, like patriotism, is the last refuge of the scoundrel (Joey), and the final resort of the person who needs to survive (Skip). Their fight at the end of the film is brutal. Skip uses his delicate hands to pound his enemy because he needs to protect what has become dear to him (both his own life and Candy’s). We might also connect the violence in this film, and in Fuller’s films generally, with his Americanism.

National Myth: Fuller is a very American director. By this, I mean that he is interested in what makes America America. In PICKUP, we have the obvious theme of the Communist menace. Consequently, we have America and the Cold War, America defending itself from its enemies. And so we have one ideology (Communist) threatening another ideology (American – however we define this). If we take Skip as the central character, then we have an American who thinks not of his flag, but of getting along in life. The police and FBI cannot convince him to help them by playing the patriotic card. Skip could care less about governments and authorities. We might say the same about Moe and Candy and even Joey. These people are not interested in patriotism; they are interested in making a buck or surviving or getting a cemetery plot. These Americans are American precisely because they follow, in a sort of manner, the implications of the second Amendment to the U.S. constitution. They are suspicious of government; they are interested in “freedom,” freedom from control. To live outside the law, you must be honest, and these people are in this way honest. This is the myth of America as a land of opportunity and freedom, with the caveat that this is just a myth. In actuality, America is a land fraught with surveillance and fear and injustice and brutality. This is Cormac McCarthy territory, or the world as Huck Finn saw it. The American hero is the wanderer, the loner, the man adapted to his environment, like Skip is to his.

Fuller made war films and westerns both because he was experienced in war and interested in history, and also because he was aware of violence as pervasive in his own country and its history. In Fuller’s world, people are separated by such things as gender, class, position, economics, race, and politics.