PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953)

The adulation for director Samuel Fuller escapes me, but I do like PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET. Richard Widmark, at his low-rent best, is a petty pickpocket who inadvertently steals a strip of microfilm intended for communist spies. His beautiful but tough mark played by Jean Peters, at her loveliest but playing against type, is carrying for her sleazy boyfriend. Forced by him to retrieve the film, Peters finds Widmark through stool pigeon Thelma Ritter, which leads to a series of double-crosses. But soon, Widmark and Peters are gaga for each other, which softens his edges a bit and switches her loyalties. In one swell scene, the cops tries to get Widmark to give up information by appealing to his sense of patriotic duty. His sneering reply is, "Are you wavin' the flag at me?" Widmark delivers the line in a tone that virtually defines the word "snark" 40 years before its first reference anywhere else. That scene and many others make PICKUP STREET wonderfully watchable and, according to many critics, among the best noir films of the ‘50s.