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August 15
“Pickup on South Street” - Elevated Acre at 55 Water St 7:30 PM FREE Because there’re so many good bands playing tonight, I really feel lousy recommending a movie instead of a show. But hey, how would you feel if you only had to talk about bands all the time? I’ve got a little more going than that. Plus, the movie, Pickup On South Street, is authored by one of my favorite indie rock stars of all time, Samuel Fuller... and, if you've never seen it before or, if you're like me and seen it quite a few times, this is an uncommon opportunity to see the film in its own geographical setting.
Pickup On South Street. This my absolute favorite Fuller flick, above Underworld USA (1961), Shock Corridor (1963), orThe Naked Kiss (1964). Not only is it one of the most fascinating portraits of the lost underbelly of the post-War New York, and raw shadowy eye-candy, but, for all of it’s the characters’ almost Brechtian two-dimensionality, contains no shortage of philosophical ambiguity.
This is one of those stories where the tough guy accidentally winds up with something very valuable – in this case Communist microfilm. The resulting narrative is a true popcorn chomper involving a combination of obvious and unexpected twists and turns. Beneath it though, dozens of moral plays are enacted on top of one another – once again in both the most blatant and subtle of fashions. Like the best rock’n’roll it walks the line between artifice and authenticity while remaining both exciting and deep. You’ll never look at the waterway as you did before… ALSO: Cartoon
Satellite – The Stone 10PM $10
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As
Mickey Spillane’s obituary found it’s way here because
he was a crude “undeniably a distinct sylist” whose
work shocked the establishment but sold enormously well (he could’ve
also been a gangster rapper), Samuel Fuller is being awarded space
here for his self-taught D.I.Y. style that was perfected into a
masterful individuality. Sam Fuller came up through newspapers to
direct B-movies with absolutely no budget, no experience, and no
prior knowledge of the technical aspects of his new trade. Since
you couldn’t go to film school back then, Fuller’s student
movie of sorts, I Shot Jesse James (1949), was commercially
released, and, because it was made for peanuts, cleared a giant
profit on the B-circuit. I Shot Jesse James is particularly
notable for its Theodor Dreyer Passion of Joan of Arc-style
close-ups. Like a freshman indie rocker’s debut album, Fuller’s
Jesse James was his most naïve, yet most stylized
work. He then did another western, then one of the best and most
unusual war movies of all-time, Steel Helmet (1951), and
a nostalgic portrait of the early days of New York’s daily
papers that was both his most ambitious effort and biggest flop,
Park Row (1952). By this point, Fuller’s work was marked
by atypical montages, overcooked performances, and odd psychological
tension. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but quite perfect for
his first film noir…
The
protagonist, a hardboiled pickpocket played by the incomparable
Richard Widmark, is a loner that lives in a shack above the water
not far from the location where they will screen tonight’s
movie. He walks a swinging plank stretching over the water to access
it. He pulls a rope from the East River and up comes a crate in
which he keeps his beer cold. If you haven’t romanticized
that specific type of bachelor lifestyle I doubt we have much in
common.
Another
true American original, Thelma Ritter, pulls off yet another stellar
performance as a stool pigeon with a heart. There’s also of
course the femme fatale, communist spies, an assortment of stereotypical
cops (the good, the bad, and the incompetent), lowlifes, and, one
of the best cameo characters in cinema history, Lightning Louie
- a heavy set man in a suit in the corner of an old-school chow
mein joint who devours a constant stream of noodles with the very
chopsticks that he uses to pocket the bribe money.