Sightlines · reception
How Pickup on South Street was received
1953 · Samuel Fuller · Pickup on South Street on Sightlines
The arc
Dismissed by some 1953 critics (Bosley Crowther sniffed at it) as pulpy Red Scare stuff, it won the Bronze Lion at Venice and was later canonized — first by the French, then by everyone — as one of the great American noirs and Fuller's masterpiece.
What’s debated
Fans still argue over its politics: is it anti-Communist propaganda or a sly subversion of it, given that its pickpocket hero sneers at flag-waving patriotism as openly as he does at the Reds?
Its footprint
Skip's 'Are you waving the flag at me?' is the film's calling card, and the wordless subway-pickpocket opening is one of the most taught and referenced sequences in noir — pure visual storytelling that filmmakers still crib from.
Where it stands
A rock-solid noir canon entry and a Criterion staple, it's the standard gateway drug to the Samuel Fuller cult — and Thelma Ritter's Moe is a perennial Letterboxd-review favorite.
Did you know? J. Edgar Hoover personally objected to the film's unpatriotic hero in a meeting with Fuller and Darryl Zanuck — and in France it was dubbed and retitled 'Le Port de la drogue,' turning the Communist microfilm plot into a drug-smuggling story to dodge the politics entirely.