Pushover (1954) - film review

When hoodlum Harry Wheeler pulls off a bank robbery, detective Paul Sheridan is tasked with maintaining a 24 hour surveillance on his girlfriend, Lona McLane.  The police expect that sooner or later Wheeler will collect his floozy and lead them to where he has hidden the stolen money.  Despite his so far unblemished reputation, Sheridan cannot help being drawn to the stunningly beautiful Lona and in the end he makes her a proposal she cannot refuse - when Wheeler shows up, they will do the dirty on him and abscond with the loot.   Sheridan gets in far deeper than he intended when he is driven to kill not only Wheeler but also one of his fellow officers.  His scheme might have worked, if a neighbour had not seen him entering Lona’s apartment...

Ill-received by some critics on its initial release and unjustly underrated ever since, Pushover is one of the more enjoyable of the late film noir thrillers, distinguishing itself with its taut screenplay, superbly atmospheric noir photography and a gripping central performance from Fred MacMurray.  Richard Quine directs the film with considerably more flair and enthusiasm than is apparent in some of his subsequent, better known cinematic offerings, although at times you cannot help feeling he is sticking a little too slavishly to the rules of the genre.  The film has been criticised for being a shallow imitation of earlier noir crime thrillers and it certainly treads some very familiar ground.  It is perhaps fairer to regard Pushover not as a bland copy but rather a slightly tongue-in-cheek but respectful homage to the noir classics of the past, in much the same vein as François Truffaut’s Vivement Dimanche (1983).  Most of the fun of this film lies in the fact that the familiar noir archetypes are instantly recognisable and we know exactly how things are going to pan out.  After all, what is the point of a film noir that doesn’t deliver what we expect, the nervewracking spectacle of a decent man being savagely corrupted and driven to a grisly death by the fatal lure of sex and loot?

Glamming it up for all it’s worth in her first film role, Kim Novak has no difficult stealing the focus as the smoulderingly sensual femme fatale, the platinum blonde siren who lures poor Fred MacMurray to his doom (you’d have thought he would know better after that nasty business with Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity).   In contrast to Novak’s cryogenically cold aloofness (it isn’t blood that flows in her veins, but liquid helium), MacMurray portrays a creature of raging passions, a man caught in the maelstrom of desire and paranoia.  It is MacMurray’s knock-out performance which makes the film so excruciatingly tense as it careers towards its thrilling (albeit totally and utterly predictable) climax.  The impression of a world gradually closing in on the main protagonist, slowly crushing his hopes and ultimately squashing the life out of him) is amplified by the confined space in which the drama takes place and by the brutally harsh noir lighting (which is particularly effective in the exterior sequences).   There are one or two obvious shortcomings - the pace is a little uneven in the first half, some of the supporting actors could have benefited from a few more years at drama school and the score occasionally sounds as if it was written for a romantic comedy - but these are fairly minor blemishes.  Overall, Pushover is a slick and stylish production, not the most original film noir you will ever see, but a dizzyingly entertaining one.

© James Travers 2011

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