Prize Sucker Powell Is How I Least Like Him


Pitfall (1948) Is Deep Fall Into Middle-Class Trap

Breadwinning Dick Powell expresses rut fatigue and that paints a target on his back for balance of this noir where fun is second to despair we know won't be relieved. Ordinary Joes on status quo chalkwalks always got it in the neck after WWII when men-folk were expected to hunker down and keep lawns mowed. We're supposed to figure Dick has disaster coming for step out of line with tempting Lizabeth Scott. I always knew men couldn't get laid for free in Code pix, but Pitfall doles out punishment to make us all stay zipped. Powell as fall guy was never a favored stance; he's too good with toss-offs and one-upping to make us like the dumbbell's plummet he takes here. Pitfall gets cultist boost precisely because it skewers postwar conformance, but that's less recipe for fun than resign to middle-class life being hell on bleak earth, then or now. Do moderns who admire Pitfall also enjoy it?




Pitfall was done independently, money being tight, and that shows. Filming was virtual tour of L.A.; we'd rather stay out of doors than suffocate on cramped sets. A best performance is Raymond Burr's, his a queasy line in heavies that made memorable a lot of thrillers that wouldn't have been so otherwise. Andre De Toth directed and co-wrote; he said later that Dick Powell snookered him into megging for free, but De Toth didn't care. He seems to have made the picture his way; maybe there was little enough at stake for no one to care. Powell produced, his radar pointed to whatever could maximize return, acting having become mere means toward that end. United Artists would release; they'd had a slew of similars to sell around a same time. How then, to tell apart Cover-Up, Jigsaw, Impact, and Pitfall, all bearing UA logo? Pie could be split but so many ways: Pitfall brought back $1.3 million, which suggests to me it got profit. Anyway, Powell kept making his home-brew, one of which, Cry Danger!, would improve on Pitfall.

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