Product: Pickup on South Street (The Criterion Collection) (1953)
Rating: 3.0
Not To Be Confused With Raymond Chandler's "Pickup On Noon Street"
Not great film noir, but good enough -- and then some. The outrageously underappreciated Richard Widmark lives up to expectations by doing an outstanding job. Jean Peters understands her character the way hand goes into glove. The always reliable Willis Bouchey doesn't disappoint (a favorite in our family because of his uncanny resemblance to my mother's Uncle Geza). Thelma Ritter (was there ever a time in her life when she didn't look 65?) gives one of her finest performances. And a word about the fight scene between Widmark and Richard Kiley: Among the best ever filmed. It's up there with the hand-to-hand between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in "From Russia with Love" and the three-way fisticuffs involving Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and Barton MacLane in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".I must say, though, that I didn't buy the Widmark-Peters relationship. The kissing scenes were awkward, his massaging of her face weird and rather disturbing, and she falls in love with him literally from one second to the next.All said and done: Reservedly recommended.