liambean
Everything about this film is first rate. Everything!The story is solid, the acting excellent, the direction spot-on, and the cinematography excellent.What a perfect paring; noir and spy-craft. Richard Widmark gives a convincing if not schizophrenic performance as a petty criminal in love with this mark. But the movie is stolen by Thelma Ritter in her final scene.Everything about this film says "dark film" without screaming it. Add to that, they "communist connection," and you have and update version of the original American film art-form.WARNING: There is a REMARKABLE amount of male on female violence for a Hayes Code film. Yes, even today, it's hard to watch.
clanciai
Richard Widmark in his prime at his best as a pickpocket who does his job too well and picks a wallet with more than money in it, resulting in a chain reaction of awful events, turning a desperate man into a murderer with many casualties on the way both by bullets and fisticuffs. Thelma Ritter makes a deep impression as an old lady selling neckties. The thriller is very carefully filmed, the tempo is slow and a bit too detailed in close-ups and long shots, but you can endure it for the sake of the story. This is definitely Sam Fuller's best film and probably the only one that will be remembered. There are no flaws, nothing to criticise or find wrong with, and the logic is watertight, although the dialog is dreadful in its drawling vulgarity, and it's not a film for those who only want action if it is fast.
museumofdave
What is it about Thelma Ritter? She has enriched so many films and in almost every one becomes a sort of Greek Chorus; it's Bette Davis we watch in All About Eve, but it's Thelma that backgrounds the commentary--whether it's an acidic riposte to Eve's sad story of theatrical neglect or the plethora of furs on the bed--"looks like a dead animal act." Ritter was nominated many times for an Oscar, and should have won in this film for her worn-out informer who is "just doing her job" in this tightly-knit film noir.It's Jean Peters who is perhaps the titular star, surprisingly rich as a rather confused femme fatale who falls for Richard Widmark's hard-edged, nervous pickpocket, living on the water in a strange little coop where he keeps his treasures on a rope in the water. This is deservedly a noir classic, with all the hallmarks of the genre, and Sam Fuller's dynamic direction guiding his three main characters through a labyrinth of crime: each has a code that has very little to do with ethics of the FBI, but are oddly admirable in their sense of self.
RResende
This is not groundbreaking and it will not change you in any fundamental way. But it is deeply noir, and that is something always worth seeing.We have a story centered on a character who is, among every character, the one who knows less about what's going on. He is the only one totally outside the juicy plot he gets sucked into, and yet the only one that everybody (police and communists) believe to be in control of everything. Everything happens to him, he fights to control the events, but ends up being swept by them. Notice this: he literally gets into the story by randomly picking a girls' pocket, and steeling some very important film. He doesn't have a clue about the importance and value of what he has, and acts accordingly. In the meanwhile he tries to outplay both the police and the communists, using the girl as his arrow girl, as a shield. He ends up loosing control both of the story (but not quite), as he falls in love with the girl. So here we have a cute sense of chaos in the story, agitated narrative where we find ourselves lost, as much as our surrogate detective, in this case the pickpocket. Fuller has a great sense of pace and mood, and this film has a very special extra thing: the floating shack where many of the fundamental twists in the narrative happen. That is one great set that I will have with me for a long time. As an explored space it is good enough, in studio context. As a metaphor for the unstable mood of the whole narrative it works fine. In the end, this space becomes the odd center of the bizarre noir world of the film, and to root a film so strongly in a place is something I always appreciate.My opinion: 4/5http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com
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