Du plomb pour l'inspecteur

In Pushover Fred MacMurray dusts off his acclaimed portrayal of Walter Neff the luckless insurance agent from Double Indemnity and gives him a badge as an easily corruptible cop. The temptation in his path is another dame, in this case Kim Novak being 'introduced' in this film as Columbia's answer to Marilyn Monroe.

MacMurray's a cop who is assigned to get close to gangster Paul Richards's moll Novak. Richards and his mob have pulled off a bank heist and if they had any sense, they'd be out of the country and fleeing. But police captain E.G. Marshall reasons that Richards ain't going nowhere without Novak.

Of course what he doesn't figure on MacMurray's libido as well as Richards. Novak's one cool ice princess in this one, she's willing to spend the loot with one crook as another and one with a badge sounds pretty good to her.

There's a side romance going as well with Novak's neighbor, nurse Dorothy Malone and fellow officer Philip Carey. Malone gets innocently caught up in the intrigue. Carey while doing surveillance on Novak's apartment gets to peeping in on Malone next door. His little Rear Window act pays off in the end.

Pushover is a fine noir drama and highly recommended for those who like myself know full well that Fred MacMurray is capable of a lot more than Disney films and My Three Sons which I think most know him for today. Novak makes a stunning debut as the ultimately luckless moll and the rest of the cast backs them up with a splendid ensemble effort.

Tight, driven little peice of "film noir" with MacMurray as a good cop driven to distraction (and murder) by the gangester moll (Novak, in her film debut, somewhat more effective than usual) he's been assigned to spy on. Malone fills in for a charming bit as the girl-next-door who MacMurray's sidekick falls for. Typically, a mistake is made by the criminals, and they will pay for it, but they're having fun along the way. Some confusion in the script seems to have resulted in Novak's character turning somewhat sympathetic towards the ending, sounding a disingenuous note. Still, good solid bit of film.

Don't read the reviews comparing it to other films before watching it on it's own merits, which are many. A damn fine Noir which isn't beholding to any other.

IMDb requires ten lines of text, but instead of impressing you with my opinions, I'll do this:

Kim Novak is stunning physically and memorable performance wise.

Fred Mc Murray is excellent on the northern-edge of his leading man days.

The first 3 minutes are perfect.

Really, the first 3 minutes make it worth watching.

LA at night, the land that built noir.

See it. Trust me.

PUSHOVER is an underrated, little known crime melodrama from the mid-'50s that introduced the blonde beauty of KIM NOVAK to audiences and gave FRED MacMURRAY another chance to play an authority figure seduced by the charms of a femme fatale. When the story begins, it turns out his accidental meeting with Novak was really a set-up, he being a cop assigned to keep track of her whereabouts after a bank hold-up results in the death of a police officer.

He suspects that her mobster boyfriend pulled the job and at first resists when she tries to convince him they can use the bank money for themselves. But eventually, he weakens and before you know it he's informing her that her phone is wire tapped and the two of them are just one step ahead of the police for the rest of the film.

PHIL CAREY, as a fellow officer and E.G. MARSHALL as the lead detective are excellent in supporting roles, as is DOROTHY MALONE in a pivotal role as a girl occupying the apartment next to Novak in a U-shaped building that enables MacMurray and Carey to keep an eye on both gals through binoculars (shades of REAR WINDOW).

Conveniently, no one ever draws the blinds in these sort of thrillers and spying is made so easy for the sake of plotting, as the 24-hour surveillance occupies much of the story. The noir elements are present throughout, the dark rainy streets, the shadowy photography during car chases, the clipped delivery of lines, the murder scheme gone awry, the femme fatale angelic on the outside, bad within.

But somehow it never becomes a major film noir, relegated to its place in obscurity over the years and not really a title that pops up when one speaks of film noir--but it does qualify as noir, on a minor scale, and it's given some taut direction and tight suspense by director Richard Quine.

Kim is as easy as ever on the eyes although a bit robotic in her acting technique and never quite convincing as a mobster's moll. MacMurray has a less interesting, more one-dimensional role as a cop corrupted by beauty.

All in all, definitely worth watching.

This film is especially notable as being the first film of Kim Novak. She is already a sizzler, from her very first scenes. The camera loves her, and her career from this point on was inevitable. It was only the next year that she set all the men of America afire by her sensuous role in Bill Inge's 'Picnic', opposite William Holden. High cheekbones never hurt a gal in films, and as Kim Novak must be of Czech descent judging from her name, we have here the classic Slav look. It wasn't long before 'Vertigo' and by then, Kim Novak had become an icon, which she remains to this day. Fred MacMurray is the leading man in this film, excellent as usual but really too old for someone like Novak to fall in love with at first sight as called for in this story. Oh well, that's casting for you. Dorothy Malone appears in this as a sweetie. The film is gripping, at the tail end of noir, a mixture of crime, cops, and mystery. The post-War mood of sombre brooding is ending, things are lightening up a bit, and crime and corruption are no longer seen as an intrusive Dark Hand of Doom but as eruptions into daily life of natural human impulses of greed, lust, and evil, which are as spontaneous as barbecues are in summer in Texas. These things 'just happen', and an end of the world scenario of being engulfed by wickedness is now seen more prosaically as 'oh no, not another crook and another crime!' As crime keeps on happening, you kind of get used to it, and films like this take on an air of 'here we go again'. So it is no longer brooding atmosphere but gripping intrigue which makes the movies work by the mid-1950s.