Pickup on South Street (1953)

Samual Fuller’s teasing direction and some well calibrated performances, particularly Thelma Ritter's character actressy Moe, and Richard Widmark’s subtlety complicated Skip, lift this mediocre script about street hoods, informants, communists and government microfilm to something proto-sublime. Jean Peters is quite the tart, and Milburn Stone vaguely Eisenhower like. Richard Kiley mostly perspires. You can tell this film was shoot on very little budget, but it works for a movie about people who live on the boarder of economic desperation, which in turn makes it kind of poignant for 2009, no. Still I didn’t care for it as much as Steve, a good film but not quite my cup of tea, I’m gonna give 3 out of 5.