Pickup

Citizen Kane it ain't, but Pickup isn't nearly as bad as one might think. Actor-director Hugo Haas deserves better, and I hope I can help the poor man (long departed) out. Haas,--no, I won't go into his career and background--let's just say the man had the reputation for being an okay actor, but as a director he was considered a sort of Central European version of Ed Wood. Pickup is about an older man, played by Haas, whose life is made a wreck of and nearly ruined by a toothy, gum-checking but withal irresistible blonde, portrayed by the unforgettable Beverly Michaels. The girl is, to be as genteel as possible, a worthless tramp, and nasty and stupid in the bargain. She plays with her adoring and naive lover like a cat with a mouse, and has an affair with a much younger man on the side. Amazingly, no one is murdered in the course of this film, which is actually at times quite sweet. Look, every novelist cannot write The Brothers Karamazov and every composer cannot write the Eroica, so why put down poor Mr. Haas whose only sin as an artist that I can tell is that is that he isn't Orson Welles. The man had a heart and soul, and this comes through in many scenes. He understands cruelty, too, and the woman in this film is, for all the melodrama, a not innacurate portrait of a certain kind of low-down broad who, if one were to show her videotapes of her inflicting her standard dose of pain on whoever the poor dope fool enough to get involved with her at the moment is, would shrug, light a cigarette and say, "Well, he was asking for it, wasn't he?". I'm not too sure about the character Mr. Haas plays in this film, but there is a kernel of truth in the mean little tale he tells; tacky though it may be, there's life in it nonetheless, which is good enough for me.

The reviewer who said "Citizen Kane it ain't" got it right. This is lowbrow stuff to be sure, but for what it is, Haas demonstrates a surprisingly keen eye for both dialogue and characterization, two things supremely lacking in the cheaper and lesser BAIT produced a few years later. Best of all, this is a highly entertaining ride, with a solid and credible performance by Haas as the pigeon who all but begs for a plucking until he sees the light (or rather hears the dark) when he overhears the plotting and venomous bile directed at him by his conniving and venal wife, who believes him to be deaf.

Trumping all however is the bravura dominatrixesque performance of Ms. Michaels as the throaty pointy-bra'ed femme fatale. Here's one of the few broads I've ever come across who might be able to actually compete with Ann Savage's mouthy and devouring DETOUR chippie for supremacy over a castrated male race. And leave the male species begging for more.

Also in the movie's favor is a reasonably tight storyline which features some nice twists and reveals with great gusto the true depths of treachery to which Michaels gleefully stoops to get her $7300 out of Haas. Again, this isn't DOUBLE INDEMNITY and it certainly isn't Shakespeare but it's charmingly pulpy and has an agreeably creamy evil nougat centre.

Hugo Haas had a fascinating life - a top actor in his native Czech Republic, he lost everything when the Nazis took over. He escaped just in time but he lost many relatives in the concentration camps. Coming to America, he established himself as a working character actor throughout the 1940s but in the early 50s Haas started making films himself - they usually were looked down upon by the critics of the day but a few did very good box office - like PICK UP. The film is now regarded as a terrific little noir and Haas is good as well as the femme fatale Beverly Michaels. If you enjoyed PICK UP, check out some of Haas' other films THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE, BAIT, THE OTHER WOMAN, HIT & RUN, HOLD BACK TOMORROW, etc. Yes, they are low budget but they are always interesting and filled with good performances.

"Pickup" is the best kind of film noir. Cheap, tawdry, lurid, and funny, all at the same time.

This film has obtained cult status for being such a good bad movie, but I didn't think it was even bad. It's quite good actually, not least because it knows just how seriously to take itself, which isn't much. Hugo Haas is a very winning presence as the film's beleaguered protagonist, a kind of poor man's Frank Morgan. But the film's best asset is undeniably Beverly Michaels as the towering, glowering femme fatale. Wait till you get a load of this broad and her way of disdainfully tossing off a one liner. I still can't decide whether or not Michaels was a terribly bad actress in a phenomenally entertaining way, or whether she plays this role brilliantly. All I know is that she had me rolling with practically every line she delivered, and the film's final line perfectly sums up the audience's feelings about her by the time this film wraps up.

I saw "Pickup" as part of a noir festival, and it probably made a huge difference to see it with a live audience who was totally into it.

Grade: A

Czechoslovakia-born Hugo Haas does a fantastic job of directing, writing the screenplay and enacting the main part in PICKUP. He certainly deserves top marks for that tripartite effort.

He is helped by excellent cinematography from Paul Ivano, sharp editing from WL Bagier, and a convincingly dissolute performance from beautiful, lanky, brooding Beverley Michaels. Howland Chamberlain also does well as the down and out intellectual who steals books from the town library and keeps quoting from them. He is the Jiminy Cricket, the conscience everyone finds irrelevant - even Jan Horak, who fails to listen to the intellectual's advice to get a dog at the beginning of the fim.

Instead, Horak (Haas) gets himself a beautiful wife who is clearly a gold digger, sleeps in different quarters - you get the feeling that there is no sex in that relation - and starts cheating the moment handsome Allan Nixon turns up.

Jan Horak's temporary deafness is exceedingly well exploited. Haas' acting is sublime throughout, the highest point being when he hears wife and lover plotting against him, and he laughs with tears streaming down.

This B pic borrows a little bit from Germany's DER BLAUE ENGEL (1931), in which an older man falls for a much younger and uncaring Marlene Dietrich, and from THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (US 1944), but it diversifies the story lines completely and it holds its own without ever coming into plagiarism territory. PICKUP should earn Hugo Haas a far better reputation than it did while he was alive. In the late 50s, early 60s some rated him the foreign Ed Wood in Hollywood, which was unfair and insulting in the extreme.

I enjoyed it very much and wholeheartedly recommend it. 8/10.