Pickup (film)

Pickup is a 1951 American film noir written and directed by Czech actor and filmmaker Hugo Haas. It was the first American film by Haas, a refugee from Nazi Europe, who went on to make a series of gloomy noirs about doomed middleaged men led astray by younger femmes fatales. Haas also starred in the film, alongside Beverly Michaels and Allan Nixon.

Haas plays Jan Hunky Horak, a hardofhearing railroad dispatcher who lives in a poor neighborhood by the railroad tracks and is seduced by Betty Michaels, who is after his money. After they marry, Betty and her lover Steve Kowalski Nixon scheme to murder him by running him over but Steve has a lastminute change of heart and swerves, lessening the impact. Jans hearing improves following the accident, and he uncovers their infidelity.On its release, Time praised Haas as Hollywoods most promising new moviemaker since Stanley Kramer, calling the film a fascinating game of cat amp mouse, played for pathos as well as suspense, and noted how its sense of character, acceptance of human frailty, and seedy, impoverished setting made it far from the usual Hollywood film. More recently Filmfanatic.org called it a tawdry, lowbudget camp classic, criticising predictable elements but praising the dialog and some unexpected plot twists. Fernando F Croce remarked on its unusually blunt masochism and sympathetic treatment of the femme fatale who makes it out alive. ........

Source: Wikipedia