Sam Fuller's excellent PICK UP ON SOUTH STREET is the pick of the bunch from a number of early 50's Cold War-influenced low-budget noir vehicles. With a running length of under 80 minutes, PICK UP ON SOUTH STREET is tough, gritty, explosive and endlessly entertaining.
Widmark stars as pickpocket Skip McCoy, who has already been picked up three times. Yet McCoy can't keep his wandering fingers out of trouble- and trouble is exactly what he slides into when he grifts the wallet of gangster's moll Candy (Jean Peters). Candy's wallet contains a roll of microfilm invaluable to the Communist movement, and it's her last job for ex-boyfriend Richard Kiley to make the delivery. However, when Widmark lifts it, Peters must do whatever it takes to re-claim the film she (initially) knows nothing about.
It's a tasty set-up, with Widmark's character, while not the psycho of KISS OF DEATH, a real live-wire, unpredictable and tough, yet curiously charming.When Bogart or Mitchum stepped into a film noir role you knew what you were going to get: a lone anti-hero maintaining his moral integrity and winning out in the end (Bogart), or an overly-laconic guy who allows himself to be drawn into a trap (Mitchum). With Widmark you just don't know what you are going to get, and with his incredibly modern acting style (his films always hold up well) he is amazing to watch. Here he is torn between making a big score for himself by selling the film, or handing it over to the police and fighting the "Commies" on the right side of the law. And he still has to pretend he never pickpocketed Peters to avoid the fatal fourth rap on his sheet.
Peters gets her best role as the moll-with-a-heart-of-gold Candy. Widmark's unpredictability is perhaps best expressed in his scenes with Peters; the gorgeous tramp quickly (and rather unbelievably- the romance angle is rather rushed)falls under Widmark's spell, yet Widmark alternates between kissing her or slapping her around. Peters hard-edged beauty, yet lack of over-lacquered Hollywood glamour (Lana Turner would never have worked well in this role), is a major asset to the film. Candy is not innocent, yet she's very vulnerable, constantly being passed between and slapped around by men. Widmark knocks her cold on first meeting and wakes her by pouring beer over her face, yet by the final act he's a lot more tender to her (after she cops one hell of a going-over from Kiley). The scene in the hospital with Peters and Widmark shouldn't work, but it does.
Thelma Ritter is brilliant as stoolie Moe, well-deserving of her Oscar nomination. Ritter's performance, like everything else in the film, is gritty, real and heartbreakingly honest. Her death scene is stunning. Fuller's camera movements and location settings are particularly interesting. Fuller loved a good close-up, and PICK UP ON SOUTH STREET is full of uncomfortable, cloistering tight shots that only enhance the tension of the plot. Fuller isn't afraid to let the camera linger on a shot for longer than standard Old-Hollywood really allowed, yet stunningly pulls away from Ritter's death scene to give the audience maximum impact. The urban locales and unusual, confronting camera angles give PICK UP ON SOUTH STREET, a bold, uncompromisingly modern look.
10/10.

No one is a greater fan of Geroge Macdonald Fraser's Flashman papers than I am.
I was surprised to see just now that Richard Lester directed Royal Flash, since I also see he had made the Three/Four Musketeers with Fraser which I though turned out rather well.
Not so Royal Flash.
I was 12 years old when the film was released and could not have been more enthusiastic since I had read all the Flashman papers published up to that time, and was intoxicated with A Clockwork Orange and Malcolm MacDowel (I still am, but he was never really given a chance after that).
What a disappointment (I saw it once again when I was about 20 on television and it seemed even worse).
None of the sharp dialogue in the books is transfered to the screen. The comedy of Flashman's character seemed to me to have been mishandled in about the same way one could imagine a group of high school students trying to parody it would do. The dueling and fencing was awful and undramatic.
Looking back with more mature eyes, the film failed completer to exploit the possibilities of direct satire of earlier film versions of the Prisoner of Zenda.
If you have read the book and not seen the film, I can only say that the film ends with Flashman and Rudi von Starnberg becoming fast friends and playing a game Rudi has just invented: Russian roulette.
A pathetic betrayal of everything the books are about.
My comments would be more direct if I had seen the film more recently, but I am glad I have not.
If by any chance Fraser ever reads this, I can only say I think he is a genius--perhaps the greatest comic novelist of his generation, but, based on my appreciation of that corpus of work, it as hard to believe that he wrote the screenplay of this film, as that he did all those awful Roger Moore James Bond films.