Samuel Fuller

Pickup on South Street

Pickup on South Street

Petty crook Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) has his eyes fixed on the big score. When the cocky three-time convict picks the pocketbook of unsuspecting Candy (Jean Peters), he finds a more spectacular haul than he could have imagined: a strip of microfilm bearing confidential U.S. information. Tailed by manipulative Feds and the unwitting courier’s Communist puppeteers, Skip and Candy find themselves in a precarious gambit that pits greed against redemption, right against Red, and passion against self-preservation. With its dazzling cast and writer-director Samuel Fuller’s signature hard-boiled repartee and raw energy, Pickup on South Street is a true film noir classic by one of America’s most passionate cinematic craftspeople.

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Film Info

  • United States
  • 1953
  • 80 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • English
  • Spine #224

Special Features

  • On the Blu-ray: New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • On the DVD: High-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
  • New interview with critic Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City (Blu-ray only)
  • Interview from 1989 with director Samuel Fuller, conducted by film critic Richard Schickel
  • Cinéma cinémas: Fuller, a 1982 French television program in which the director discusses the making of the film
  • On-screen biographical essay on Fuller, poster filmography, and publicity stills (DVD only)
  • Trailers
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: Essays by author and critic Lucy Sante and filmmaker Martin Scorsese, and, for the Blu-ray edition, a chapter from Fuller’s posthumously published 2002 autobiography, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking

Blu-ray cover by Eric Skillman (pictured); DVD cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • On the Blu-ray: New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • On the DVD: High-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
  • New interview with critic Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City (Blu-ray only)
  • Interview from 1989 with director Samuel Fuller, conducted by film critic Richard Schickel
  • Cinéma cinémas: Fuller, a 1982 French television program in which the director discusses the making of the film
  • On-screen biographical essay on Fuller, poster filmography, and publicity stills (DVD only)
  • Trailers
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: Essays by author and critic Lucy Sante and filmmaker Martin Scorsese, and, for the Blu-ray edition, a chapter from Fuller’s posthumously published 2002 autobiography, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking

Blu-ray cover by Eric Skillman (pictured); DVD cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Pickup on South Street
Cast
Richard Widmark
Skip McCoy
Jean Peters
Candy
Thelma Ritter
Moe
Murvyn Vye
Captain Dan Tiger
Richard Kiley
Joey
Willis B. Bouchey
Zara
Milburn Stone
Winoki
Henry Slate
MacGregor
Victor Perry
Lightning Louie
Credits
Director
Samuel Fuller
Producer
Jules Schermer
Cinematography
Joseph MacDonald
Screenplay
Samuel Fuller
From a story by
Dwight Taylor
Director of photography
Joe MacDonald
Music
Leigh Harline
Musical direction
Lionel Newman
Art direction
Lyle Wheeler
Art direction
George Patrick
Set decoration
Al Orenbach
Film editor
Nick De Maggio
Wardrobe direction
Charles Le Maire
Costumes designed by
Travilla
Orchestration
Edward Powell
Makeup artist
Ben Nye
Special photographic effects
Ray Kellogg
Sound
Winston H. Leverett

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Explore

Samuel Fuller

Writer, Director

Samuel Fuller
Samuel Fuller

Crime reporter, freelance journalist, pulp novelist, screenwriter, World War II infantryman—Samuel Fuller was a jack of all trades before the high-school dropout directed his first film at age thirty-six. But once he was contacted by Poverty Row producer Robert L. Lippert, a fan of his writing, Fuller was turned on to cinema—his true calling. A singularly audacious visionary of the B-movie variety, Fuller would make muscular, minuscule pictures, starting with the one-two-three punch of I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona, and The Steel Helmet—the last a raw Korean War saga that was one of the few films of the period to address racism in America. Soon after, Fuller was scooped up by Twentieth Century Fox, but he was able to maintain his purposefully crude, elegantly stripped-down style and teeth-bared cynicism for such studio efforts as Fixed Bayonets! and Pickup on South Street. Eventually, Fuller returned to independent filmmaking, and in the sixties (after his artistic cred had been given a shot in the arm by the French New Wavers’ embrace of him as a major stylistic influence), he directed two of his most acclaimed titles, the pulpy and profound Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss, both corrosive satires of American culture. Even in his career’s twilight, Fuller didn’t shy away from controversy: his early eighties social horror film White Dog was shelved by the studio for more than a decade due to its provocative, bloody investigation of American racism.

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