10.5 DISCUSSION: Pickup on South Street

10.5 DISCUSSION: Pickup on South Street

Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953)


INSTRUCTIONS:

This week we will have a less formal discussion that aims to mirror our REMOTE in-class discussions. While asynchronous, I think we can find some sense of connection and exchange of ideas here.

I'd like to start by mentioning a few elements of the film that highlight this post-war effort that is very much a kiss-off to the straight establishment and law enforcement.

Remember, we are in the thick of it with career criminals in this film and are privy to their thinking/experience.

A few prompts to get you started:

1. Subversion of the Production Code: what elements do you see at play? How are they enacted visually, in terms of dialogue and/or action?

2. Gender roles - they are not stereotypical, how do they function in the bigger picture as well as the smaller stories within the film? Why is it significant (or not)?

3. Use of Red Scare/Communism as a "red herring" - what is really at stake?

4. The importance of supporting characters (there is the start of a discussion on the link provided about Thelma Ritter's character)

Minimum Length Requirement: 250-300 words and at least one 75 word thoughtful response engaging with ideas explored in a classmate's posting.

My Essay: 

The piece of microfiche that is the catalyst of the plot in Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953), did seem to me to be a red herring or MacGuffin. It was something that was highly sought and brought the story together, but it was just an unnamed piece of film, that was spliced that never got delivered. It wasn’t what the story was about.

Spicer in Film Noir pgs. 69-70 discusses that there is a sub-cycle of noir in the early 1950s that was about the Communist threat. I don’t think this film is about that either.

The story is about the three street characters Moe, Skip and Candy that get connected to each other due to the secret film. The story is created from the characters that Samuel Fuller met and respected from the criminal element in New York City where he worked as a crime reporter since the age of seventeen.

Fuller in the YouTube interview part one (Links to an external site.) and two (Links to an external site.), he discusses his admiration for the criminal code. It’s ok for Moe to sell Skip to Candy for $50 because "she's gotta eat too". Skip finds out and respects that about Moe also and hopes she got a good payout. However, Moe will die before she will sell Joey out to a man with a gun who wants to kill Skip.

Skip in the end, ends up pulverizing the communist agent Joey in a big subway fight. Fuller explains that it wasn’t for the United States of “all of that phony cold war stuff” but because he had never had a woman that cared about him this way before and had gotten beaten up to defend him. Also, his dear friend Moe died to save him.

Edited by Ida on Apr 17 at 8:58pm

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