La racoleuse

"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.

(1951) Pickup DRAMA

Adapted from the novel "Watchman 47" by Josef Kopta produced, written, directed and starring Hugo Haas. He plays somewhat overweight and older train track maintenance man, Jan "Hunky" Horak. His workplace also happens to be his place of residence as well as he lets in a familiar friend nickname the "Professor" (Howland Chamberlain) to serve himself some coffee. The Professor then informs Hunky that puppies are for sale at the state fair, after learning Hunky has just lost his dog. A new employee, Steve Kowalski (Allan Nixon) then shows up to take his place for awhile, while Husky visits the county fair to possibly fetch himself a new puppy. While there, we find out Husky is tight with his money, arguing over the price with the person selling it to him, and it is not long before he is taken in by a young gold digger, Betty (Beverly Michaels) after seeing her riding on a carousal with her best friend. Betty assumes he has money despite him not her type and she bets her friend, she can get Hunky to pay for her meal. It was not long before Hunky pays for everything. By the time Hunky drives her to his place of residence, while he goes out to get something for the coffee, she then takes the opportunity to snoop around and take a look at his bank account. By the time she is driven back into town with Steve, she then finds out her and her friend are being evicted with three month back rent owing. The next scene then showcases both older Husky and young gold digger, Betty married, sleeping in separate beds with Husky attempting to show Betty what he does for a living. It was at this point is when Husky loses his hearing. As the doctor could not figure out how to regain his hearing back, it was as soon as he was heading back to town and was almost hit by another vehicle is when his hearing came back. The intended crime is when Betty professes Husky her actual reason why she was with him in the first place, and tries to manipulate Steve involve into murder.

What I liked about "Pickup" is the fact that just when you think something terrible was going to happen, which would have made the entire experience routine and expected- it doesn't. Making the entire theatrical experience much more humanly easy to identify.

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.

It's pretty difficult to dismiss Haas as an 'sleazy, murky old guy' or 'The Bad Director' in his exile days (read US, later). He's trying hard and the pictures do have some bright moments, when you feel like as if it was a serious drama, or when you laugh hard. The problem is -- for some people -- that you get both in one package and that you might laugh at places where it wasn't intended. But I enjoyed this picture -- and I am not saying this only because of my hurt national pride or something.