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Simply Perfect

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Despite being a B-movie that didn't make much money at the time of its initial release, "Pushover" will still appeal strongly to the average film noir fan. Its story about obsession, betrayal and murder contains many familiar elements but remains thoroughly engrossing throughout because it's well paced, frequently suspenseful and has a compelling plot. The atmosphere is claustrophobic and this is reinforced visually by the action being staged mostly in small, often cramped, rooms and dark rainy streets. The shadowy interiors are beautifully photographed and the ways in which the streetlights reflect on wet roads and illuminate raindrops on the cars are just a couple of examples of the superb quality of D.P. Lester White's work.Middle-aged LAPD Detective Paul Sheridan (Fred MacMurray) makes the acquaintance of an attractive young blonde called Lona McLane (Kim Novak) after she has some problems with her car and the couple quickly become lovers when they spend some time together waiting for the necessary repairs to be carried out. All is not as it appears however, because this apparently random meeting was set up by Paul who'd been assigned to the task by his boss because Lona is suspected of being the girlfriend of a wanted fugitive and Paul has been told to find out whether she knows her fiancé's whereabouts. He soon reports back to Detective Lieutenant Carl Eckstrom (E.G.Marshall) that he's convinced that she is in a relationship with bank robber Harry Wheeler (Paul Richards).Eckstrom feels confident that Wheeler will contact Lona at some point and so arranges for her phone to be tapped and for her apartment to be kept under constant surveillance. Paul and his fellow detective Rick McAllister (Philip Carey) are part of the stakeout team who occupy a room that overlooks Lona's apartment and together they wait for Wheeler to make his move. It's during this period that Lona suspects that Paul is a cop and when she confronts him on the issue, he eventually admits that she's right but assures her that his interest in her is genuine. She remarks that the $200,000 that had been stolen from the bank by Wheeler's gang could set them up nicely for the future if they could get their hands on it when Wheeler is eventually apprehended. Paul wants no part in that kind of scheme and soon returns to his stakeout duties.Rick starts to find his work becomes a little less tedious when he starts watching Lona's attractive neighbour, Ann Stewart (Dorothy Malone) but also one of Paul's colleagues notices that he is steadily becoming more and more agitated. Completely obsessed by Lona, Paul arranges to meet her again and together they agree to carry out her plan. A telephone call that she receives on the following day than sets Paul off in pursuit of the stolen money but the complications that follow soon lead him into desperation, betrayals and murders when things suddenly start to spiral out of control.The sequences in which the detectives spy on the women through binoculars are uncomfortably voyeuristic and very similar to certain scenes in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" which was also released in the same year as this movie. The bank robbery and an episode that takes place in Ann Stewart's apartment are played out without any dialogue and as well as being well directed are also rather Hitchcockian in style.During his childhood, Paul had frequently witnessed his parents arguing about money and this experience led him to believe that without plenty of cash, a successful relationship with a woman would be completely impossible. As a result, he was always more vulnerable than most to being corrupted by anyone with Lona's mindset and greed. Fred MacMurray does well at portraying his character's confident and competent exterior while also giving signs along the way of how he's gradually unravelling. Kim Novak, in her first starring role, is well cast as the seductive femme fatale and Philip Carey and Dorothy Malone also contribute a couple of really good supporting performances.

I enjoyed the good performances from all the cast, though no surprises here from Fred MacMurray, in this late noir however the actors were all severely let down by the very flat direction of Richard Quine in what could have been a taut thriller instead of what we have here, than is a Double Indemnity wannabe. The film's atmosphere though is greatly helped with a redeeming feature - the weather and in particular the rain, the wet streets.I wonder if Hitchcock had seen this movie before casting Kim Novak in Vertigo? She moves through the movie like a somnambulist. It's worth pointing out the sweater she wears in early scenes which looks forward to the sweater girls that followed.

Pushover is directed by Richard Quine and adapted to screenplay by Roy Huggins from stories written by Bill S. Ballinger and Thomas Walsh. It stars Fred MacMurray, Phillip Carey, Kim Novak, Dorothy Malone and E. G. Marshall. Music is scored by Arthur Morton and cinematography by Lester White.Straight cop Paul Sheridan (MacMurray) is on the trail of the loot stolen in a bank robbery where a guard was shot and killed. He is tasked with getting to know Lona McLane (Novak), the girlfriend of the chief suspect in the robbery. But once contact is made, and surveillance set up over the road from her apartment complex, Sheridan begins to fall in love and lust with the sultry femme.Comparisons with the superior Double Indemnity are fair enough, but really there is enough here, and considerable differences too, for the film to rightfully be judged on its own merits. Also of note to point out is that one or two critics have questioned if Pushover is actually a film noir piece? Bizarre! Given that character motives, destinies and thematics of plot are quintessential film noir.A good but weary guy is emotionally vulnerable and finds his life spun into a vortex of lust, greed and murder. Yet the femme fatale responsible, is not a rank and file manipulator, she too has big issues to deal with, a trophy girlfriend to a crook, she coarsely resents this fact. The cop who never smiles and the girl who has forgotten how too, is there hope there? Do they need the money that has weaved them together? What does that old devil called fate have in store for them? Classic noir traits do pulse from the plot. True, the trajectory the pic takes had been a well trodden formula in noir by the mid fifties, where noir as a strong force was on the wane, but this holds up very well.It isn't just a piece solely relying on two characters either, there's the concurrent tale of Sheridan's voyeuristic partner Rik McAllister (Carey), who has caught the eye of Lona's next door neighbour, Ann Stewart (Malone). Both these characters operate in a different world to the other two, yet the question remains if a relationship can be born out from such shady beginnings? The presentation of relationships here is delightfully perverse. The visual style wrung out by Quine (Drive a Crooked Road) and White (5 Against the House) is most assuredly noir, with 99% of the film set at night, with prominent shadows, damp streets lit by bulbous lamps and roof top scenes decorated sparsely by jutting aerials. The L.A. backdrop a moody observer to the unwrapping of damaged human goods.Cast are very good, all working well for their reliable director. Novak sizzles in what was her first credited starring role, she perfectly embodies a gal that someone like Paul Sheridan could lose his soul for. MacMurray is suitably weary, his lived in face telling of a life lacking in genuine moments of pleasure. Carey, square jawed, tall and handsome, he is the perfect foil to MacMurray's woe. Malone offers the potential ray of light trying to break out in this dark part of America, while Marshall as tough Lieutenant Eckstrom and Allen Nourse as a copper riding the noir train to sadness, score favourably too.It opens with a daylight bank robbery and closes in true noir style on a cold and wet night time street. Pushover, deserving to be viewed as one of the more interesting 1950s film noirs. 8/10

But it's not as effective as either noir, despite the presence of the former's Fred MacMurray in a similar role, and the voyeuristic titillation of the latter (much peering through binoculars at apartments across the courtyard, and nobody ever draws the blinds). He's a good-cop-turned-bad, seducing a bank robber's girlfriend (Kim Novak in her film debut, voluptuous as all getout but not trying very hard) and falling hard for her. The initial seduction is fun, much like Walter Neff squaring off with Babe Diedrickson (sp?) in "Double Indemnity." But the pair aren't ideally matched--by this time, MacMurray looks paunchy and less than leading-man suave, and his underplaying and her nonplaying leave us not caring that much whether the pair can pull their caper off. Maybe if he and the more vital Philip Carey, as his partner, had switched roles, there would be more heat. Some sharper dialog would help, too. Director Richard Quine shows a fondness for close-up shots of meaningless details, presumably just to throw the audience off. The noir mechanics include harsh black-and-white photography with an emphasis on the black, a pileup of bodies, and, most curiously, constant rain in what should be a sunny Los Angeles setting. A good enough time-waster, and it makes the most of its low budget, but more care could have produced something much better.