Aufgelesen

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.

The set-up is the same as in "The postman always calls twice", but Beverly Michaels is no Lana Turner. She is much worse, much cheaper and much more vulgar but at the same enticingly prettier and more taunting. You will hate her but at the same time adore her splendid vulgarity. Hugo Haas is the poor old service man who is stupid enough to marry her without suspecting the consequences. Allan Nixon is the young man who becomes her second prey, but as he cannot fulfil her desires he is actually saved. The most interesting part is Hugo Haas' spells of losing his hearing, which forms a vital part of the drama. It is not a very remarkable film but very good of its kind, having had no ambitions for any masterpiece, but it should go along well together with "Detour".

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.

"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

This Hugo Haas vehicle about a middle-aged railroad worker and a young woman who is attractive on the outside, but pure lowlife on the inside has elements of several better films, like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and even Blue Angel. But this film never achieves anywhere near the status of those classics. I loved Beverly Michaels as the heavy, and it is a shame she did not make more significant films. But Hugo Haas was never more than a minor B actor, although he does a good job in this role. The film is intriguing in some spots and lifeless in others, so it gets the rating that can't make up its mind; a five.