Rating: 
Summary: A top notch film noir
Review: Skip Mc Coy (Richard Widmark) is a person without colective importance; a rough pickpocket , a scroungy pretty gangster who sneeks a look into a woman's handbag, turns up some microfilm and finds himself dealing with communist agents.
This is a well made film, with a lot of issues. Moe (Thelma Ritter)overtakes this role as a street peddler who sells information.
A film which reveals as a few, the sordid and sinister underworld linked with the spy world which is blackmailed by a pedestrian thief.
Fuller's view is incisive, bitter and ironical. Nevetheless the film has unforgettable funny situations.
Thelma Ritter was a very talented actress and bowever, she never won an Academy Award ; but her shinning presence gives to the clever script that touch of class and outrageous fierce character; and of course don't forget adding the charismatical performance of Richard Widmark.
One of the most imaginative and powerful film noir made in any age.
Rating:
Summary: PICK UP should be listed among the 100 best films ever made
Review: The camera angles, the emotion, the violent outbursts of its characters and the suspense can be sensed in every frame of this film. Sam Fuller did create a masterpiece and it won him the Best Film Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1954 - deservedly!The acting: Widmark is at his best. His Skip is a bomb threatening to explode any time. This is probably Jean Peters's best acting job in a movie. This actress has a lot of fire in her that she seems to keep under control, but - like Widmark - you can sense it can explode any time. Thelma Ritter (who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance) is tops as well and so is Richard Killey. These four actors in fact should have all been nominated for awards and certainly the film should have been - but that was Hollydwood in the 50's - the film was controversial, a film noir at that and Cinemascope and spectacles had entered the picture and sweeping all the awards then selected by fools enchanted with special effects, color and big screens.
This film is a jewel and it should be given more attention, more credit, and you should see it!!!
Rating: 
Summary: The Face of Film Noir
Review: The face of film noir wouldn't have been the same without the distinctive face of Richard Widmark who exploded into the genre with his memorably over-the-top performance as baddie Tommy Udo in 1947's Kiss of Death. For my money, however, it's the underrated Victor Mature who really carries that film, although Widmark gets all the flashy scenes (his pushing of a wheelchair-bound Mildred Dunnock down the stairs is widely considered one of the cruelest in film history). In Jules Dassin's Night and the City (1950) and Pickup on South Street, however, Widmark truly comes into his own with two of the finest film noir performances of all time. The stage trained actor had added some substance to the flash. You find yourself sympathizing with the callous Skip McCoy (Pickup on South Street) and nervous Harry Fabian (Night and the City) despite their bad qualities. There's an underlying vulnerability behind all the tough talk and rough gestures (the fact that Widmark looked so undernourished in the '50s may have also had something to do with it). With the uncompromising Sam Fuller (Shock Corridor) at the helm and Thelma Ritter (All About Eve, Rear Window) in a scene-stealing supporting role, you can't go wrong. An essential release for the film noir afficionado.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your time or money on this one
Review: The story sounded great and Entertainment Weekly said it was a great film. The story starts with a pickpocket who takes a woman's bag on a subway. What he doesn't know is that she's carrying film to Russian spies and being watched by the FBI. Now he's got some valuable film, but the FBI and Russians are both after him for it. Sounds like a great idea, but it was a horrible movie.
The woman, who is the ex-girlfriend of the guy who is providing the film to the Russians makes several trips to see the guy who took her purse and he beats her up once or twice, but for some reason she falls in love with him anyway.
If you want to watch a great mystery with a lot of plot twists, check out "The Spanish Prisoner" or "House of Games" instead.
Rating:
Summary: A beautifully restored version of a Samuel Fuller classic
Review: This is one of the finest low budget crime films of the fifties, one that manages to get an extraordinary number of things right. After a dozen years of film noir and tough detective films, one would have imagined that most of the angles would have been tried and worked to exhaustion, but PICKUP ON NOON STREET managed to be amazingly fresh and original. It is also a multi-layered film. On one level, it is an espionage film, with federal authorities, with the help of local police in New York, on the trail of a group selling secrets to the Communists. Interestingly, the collaborators are not treated as political individuals, but utterly unprincipled capitalists. As Joey, Richard Kiley's character, puts it early in the film to his former girlfriend Candy, "How many times do I have to tell you we're not criminals. This is big business."
The film features a first rate cast. Except possibly for his screen debut in KISS OF DEATH, Richard Widmark was never better than he was in this film as three-time loser pickpocket Skip McCoy. The ultimate anti-hero, McCoy's motives are complex and opaque, even at the end. Jean Peters, later Mrs. Howard Hughes (to whom she was married from 1957 to 1971), is fetching as Candy, a shady dame with a past but with the proverbial heart of gold. Richard Kiley is suitably slimy as Joey, the seller of secrets to the Communists. Kiley would later (after his voice darkened) become the narrator for dozens upon dozens of National Geographic specials (such a familiar voice that they joke in JURAISSAC PARK about getting him to do the voice over for their guided tour). Thelma Ritter, as she did so often in the forties and fifties, steals every scene she is in as the necktie-selling, police informing Moe Williams, who is saving up for her gravestone and burial plot ("If they buried me in potter's field, it would just kill me").
The psychology of the characters comes straight from Mickey Spillane. A notable instance is the way Candy falls for Skip McCoy. This aspect of the film isn't merely improbable: it is impossible. Skip picks her pocket. He causes her to go on a long search for him while paying off stoolies along the way. He slugs her upon their next meeting when he finds her going through his things, robs her purse while she is unconscious, and then pours beer on her face to wake her up. After kissing her, he unceremoniously tosses her out on the street. When she returns, he kisses her some more, before pushing her down, taking all the money out of her purse, and then shaking her down for more money. And, of course, by this time she is hopelessly in love with him. In what universe is this possible? None, but for the sake of the drama we accept it effortlessly.
The film is stuffed with marvelous details, whether dialogue, music, or sets. No one seeing the film could ever forget Skip's bizarre waterfront lodgings, in which he cools his beer (and stores his booty) by lowering a wooden box into the East River with a rope. Among dozens of great touches, one of my favorites is when a stoolie, eating Chinese food, takes his tip money and puts it in his pocket using chopsticks. The score, by the relatively unknown Leigh Harline, nonetheless manages to be almost as edgy as Edward Hermann.
Interestingly, for all the film's cynicism and edginess, it actually ends up with a more conventional happy ending than most of the hardboiled crime films of the forties and fifties. The guy and the gal end up together, and perhaps even happy. Moe tells Skip, "Stop using your hands, Skip, and start using your head." He does, and all ends well. By the end, the bad guys are all either dead or in jail. What is fascinating about all this is that it was a direct violation of the Code, which decreed that all characters who engage in crime must be shown as paying for those crimes by the end of the film (which is why all those Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney villains of the thirties always died by the end of the film). Skip McCoy is not only a creep, he is a thief, yet at the end he is not only punished: he is given a clean bill of health for cooperating in taking down Commies. As such, he is one of the most unique anti-heroes of the age.
This is an absolute must-see film though I would like to add that for a Criterion film, this has perhaps the smallest number of first-rate features that I can recall. The print itself is pristine and gorgeous, but you get no additional video features. All the features are either articles or printed interviews.
Rating:
Summary: Brutal Little Known Noir Masterpiece!
Review: This little known gem is a knockout sleeper. Tough, brutal, and effective noir. Fuller pulps it up as he tells us the story of a down on his luck pickpocket who hits it big when he steals a topsecret microfilm that's worth a look to the commies. But the film's plot isn't its strong point. The quiet scenes between Jean Peters and Richard Widmark are unbearably sexy. The scene where he knocks her out and then wakes her up by spilling cold beer on her is one of the defining moments in noir history. Thelma Ritter delivers a devastating performance as the tough Moe, a weary kindhearted informer who 'has to make a living somehow', a heartbreaking performance. Also the last scenes where Widmark beats the hell out of Peters's weasely commie boyfriend is just about as violent as you could get back then. From a scale of 1-10 I give this film an 8!
Rating:
Summary: A great early Samuel Fuller movie.
Review: This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
"Pickup on South Street" is a great film-noir release sontains some excellent scenes.
The movie is about a woman who is delivering a piece of microfilm with top-secret material but is mugged in the process. The feds were watching her but unable to catch the mugger. The government then attempts to recover the film.
The DVD his a great number of special features also.
There are trailers for eight of Samuel Fuller's movies. Fixed Bayonets (1951), Pickup on South Street (1953), House of Bamboo (1955) China Gate (1957), Forty Guns (1957), Hell and High Water (1957) (theatrical and teaser), Shock Corridor (1963), and The Naked Kiss (1964).
There is a stills gallery with behind the scenes pictures of the film and others. There are also pictures of lobby cards for all of his films including the release in other countries. There is an interview with the director, a French TV documentary on the film's production, an illustrated biography of the director and a 20 page booklet in the liner notes with many more material.
This is a great film that you should not miss.
Rating:
Summary: More than just a great film noir
Review: We know Widmark will be tough before the film even starts but the surprise is watching Peters who is tough, smart and terrific. The first scene has no dialog as we just take in Peters and Widmark up against each other on a packed train car. And it gets better with the first kiss in the shack. As an earlier reviewer wrote, the writing is superior- I loved everything except the last line where Candy and Skip leave the police station. Thelma Ritter is a bonus.
Rating:
Summary: WRONG RATING!! BIG ERROR!!
Review: Why does Amazon or Criterion show this 1953 old mainstream film noir movie as having an NC-17 rating, "Not for Sale to Anyone Under 18"???
This is a ridiculous error and needs to be corrected. First of all, there was no such film rating system in 1953 and second of all, this film would not be rated NC-17 if there had been such a rating system!!
This error should be corrected and soon!
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