10.3 Camerawork Countering Noir Convention

10.3 Camerawork Countering Noir Convention

Candy and Skip get physical as unchained camera work heightens the stakes

Fuller's athletic camerawork also counters noir convention. This film is almost constantly in motion, as the camera nervously tries to keep abreast of the action with a series of jiggling tracking and crane shots. The pattern on the movement differs from the utterly controlled methods of Lang or Wilder. Fuller seems to work from a spontaneous impulse, and the location shooting has a sense of improvisation, an immediacy, that separates it from the directorial calculation of typical noir. Scenes on the subway, and the climactic shootout on a subway platform, place the action in a palpably real environment: New York in the summer, an inferno of waterfront dives and steamy, crowded streets. The emphatic local color is carried over into the dialogue, which is packed with underworld lingo. Pickup on South Street is a brilliant example of the way an idiosyncratic director can redeem ordinary material. Out of a sub-noir story, Fuller has fashioned a punchy valentine to the big city underworld, with petty hoods and bag-lady informers stirred to their finest hour as they vanquish the communist threat.

- Foster Hirsch, Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen pgs. 131-132

Pickup on South Street features several excellent set pieces that reveal Fuller’s talent for managing scenes that involve complex camera work. The opening scene on the subway train is one such. Filmed on a specially constructed studio set at Fox, it is both realistic and stylized. Fuller concentrates on the faces of the bored passengers and conveys all his information without dialogue.

YouTube Pickup on South Street (1953) -- Opening Scene (In the Subway)
Link Here

Something similar happens with the climactic fight between Skip and Joey after the microfilm has been exchanged in a public toilet. Again, the action happens in the subway.

YouTube Pickup on South Street (1953) -- Confrontation and Subway Fight Scene 
Link Here

However, after Joey escapes and Skip pursues him onto the tracks, there is an abrupt, anticlimactic end to their fight, and a jarringly cute epilogue occurs in which Candy and Skip form a romantic bond in a hospital ward.

This seems lightweight, but there is a serious thematic point made in the closing sequences. Skip learns the meaning of decency and commitment, mainly from Mo’s example in sacrificing her life for him. His change of heart is shown when Mo is bound for Potter’s Field on a boat full of coffins. Skip, looking more sober and serious than at any other time, redeems her body for the kind of burial she always hankered after.

- Brian McDonnell, Encyclopedia of Film Noir pg. 331


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