When Thelma Ritter should have won
Monday, November 29, 2021 at 6:30PM 
Before "Noirvember" ends, it's imperative to explore some examples of the shadowy underbelly of Classic Hollywood. The Criterion Channel has programmed a vast array of film noir offerings, from Robert Mitchum's early successes to a cornucopia of Twentieth Century-Fox delights. You will find many a classic within the latter, including the Samuel Fuller masterpiece that should have earned one of the industry's hardest-working character actresses an overdue Academy Award. Throughout her career, Thelma Ritter was Oscar-nominated six times, always in the Best Supporting Actress category (an all time record), but always lost. 1953's perfect Pickup On South Street should have been her time to win…
Fuller's crystalline noir is a deceptively simple story that is charged with anti-communist paranoia and plenty of Cold War anxiety. Following a pickpocket, Skip McCoy, we observe as he steals the wallet of an unsuspecting woman riding the crowded New York subway. Her name's Candy, and neither she nor Skip know what's inside the purloined wallet. It contains microfilm full of classified government information that she was supposed to deliver to an ex-beau, the treacherous Joey, who, as it happens, is a communist spy. Unbeknownst to our two main players, they become the center of clashing pursuits, on the one side a spy ring, on the other American authorities. Since this is a Hollywood joint, Skip and Candy eventually fall in love, but not before some collateral damage paints the streets red.
While it's impossible to escape the picture's anti-Communist fervor, one shouldn't suppose Pickup on South Street is any more enamored with American capitalism. Deep within its blackened heart, the movie has cutting observations about everything and everyone it depicts. Indeed, police and government are as vivisected as the murderous spies, with only the hardworking criminals getting any sympathy from Fuller. Their plights may illuminate systemic and societal failures, the grift of the American dream, and its collapse. The crooks have rich interiorities, their humanity shining like a beacon of light in a dark world that's eager to exploit them, to suck them dry until their last breath. It's no wonder the movie's most immortal line is "I have to go on making a living so I can die."
Thelma Ritter says it, summarizing her character's life as a constant grind perpetuated by the desire to one day purchase her own place in the cemetery. It's a sad realization to see one's entire time on Earth as nothing but work that can never end lest you jeopardize your eternal dignity in death. She's Mo Williams, who supplements her black-market necktie business with whatever sums she can get from the police for information. When we meet her, it's business as usual as the seller of secrets peddles her wares amid the lawmen. In many ways, it's also business as usual for Ritter, who, by 1953, had perfected a screen persona made up of cynical wisecracks and a no-nonsense attitude perfect for tough broads such as Moe Williams.
Not that Moe's as tough as she may initially come across, something that Ritter signals from her first scene. While the woman's speech about her nice Long Island cemetery plot is a well-rehearsed shtick, both Fuller's camera and the actress' performance make sure there's a ring of truth to the hucksterism. Moe's genuine fear of a pauper's grave lives in the unshed tear she tries to hide with a toothy smile, the averted gaze that feels like a stage-bound skit run ragged with despair. Once upon a time, this might have been a bunch of mercenary lies performed with thick Brooklyn accent amped up for extra color – not anymore. Her physicality further reveals the artifice of Moe's sales pitch, privileging broad gestures and a stilted tension. When alone at home, her body moves in tired relaxation, defined by peaceful exhaustion rather than this pent-up pantomime.
Had Ritter only appeared in this first scene, an Oscar nomination would have been hardly justifiable, even as Fuller's propensity for long takes demands theatrical technique from his performers. However, the part's no mere cameo as we later find Moe in the privacy of her humble abode. In a modest nightgown and round spectacles, Ritter's squashed frame and briny face project a softer side of the career informer. That same night, after selling Skip to the cops, Moe is visited by Candy and quickly realizes she can double her earnings by bartering off the goods two times, once to each party of the manhunt. Still, before a calculated glint illuminates Thelma Ritter's features, another morsel of vulnerability is offered to us in the form of Moe's wounded pride.
Stool pigeons never like to be called stool pigeons, even when they're as charismatic as our friend. Even so, Moe has her limits, especially when it comes to one of her few friends. Skip's crawled under her skin, earned respect and even a modicum of motherly care that upsets her self-serving economy. Realizing the communists may be after him and that he's risking more than just a stint in jail, Moe's mouth shuts. In her only scene with Richard Widmark as Skip, Ritter's stream of bravado runs dry, uncovering a bedrock of shame that anyone with a working eye can see. It's a brief prologue to her last and most extraordinary scene, a crescendo of weariness that follows Moe home and onto her bed. After a long day, the woman just wants to rest her feet, perchance her soul, and forget she might have betrayed a beloved ally.
And then, a miracle happens in the form of a menacing man. Moe's offered a chance to atone and a one-way ticket to her eternal resting place. Watching Ritter walk is to register a lifetime of aches and woes, each disappointment leaving behind a bruise, old frailty that only grows worse with age. When the killer comes into view, there's only a whisper of surprise, for Moe knew, deep down, that this was coming. Pressured to reveal Skip's whereabouts, she keeps her mouth shut and faces the end with a dignity that she fears won't ever be repaid. Monologuing about her pains, Ritter's tired dame speaks the truth through lies, saying she yearns for the mercy of a bullet to the head. Like with her first scene, Moe's putting on an act to persuade a powerful man but ends up surrendering to vulnerability as a way to convince both him and herself.
The scene's the end of a beautiful crescendo that Thelma Ritter plays like a master, withholding just enough at first so that we can't guess the devastating nature of her fate. Had she shown her hand too soon, the elegiac final note wouldn't have hit as hard. This way, the actress creates a three-dimensional woman out of many masks and wry witticisms, laying a sturdy foundation while still leaving space for added depths to blossom along with the narrative. Samuel Fuller gifted the queen of Hollywood character actresses with a part befitting an empress of noir, and she ran with it, showing everyone why she was the best in the business. While Donna Reed isn't a preposterous Oscar winner, her turn in From Here to Eternity pales compared to Ritter's miniature portrait. This was her time, her peak, even if the Academy didn't see it back in 1953.
Reader Comments (9)
What a lovely piece of writing.
Ritter used to hold "Come watch me lose" parties on Oscar night after she lost for this film.
She is the supreme supporting actress shame she was up againsy fearsome competiton in 62 as i'd have given it to her for BOA.
She fucking killed it in that film and she just stole the film from everyone. It is really her film more than Samuel Fuller's but Fuller to his credit was able to get Ritter at her best. This is in my opinion one of Fuller's finest films.
Great read! A shame Ritter never won as she's always a delight.
Also, I really wish I could have been at the Come Watch Me Lose parties! I wonder what the guest lists were like!
Hollywood hate old women. They prefer ingenues who are one trick ponies.
Just saying... in Spain, we had our own Thelma Ritter, and thankfully enough, Spanish Oscars - the Goya Awards - nominated her 6 times, and she won one, for the Oscar-winning film Belle Epoque (!993).
But they criminally nominated her in Supporting for probably her best LEAD performance, "Espérame en el Cielo", a delightful film about a Franco lookalike, that is moving and funny at the same time, an interesting iteration of the classic "Zelda prisoner" story.
Without a doubt! (And frankly, I find Reed rather bland.)
The movie is not so great. But her final scene is some of the best acting I've ever seen.
I loved Criterion's Fox Noir series. It was a great opportunity to rewatch old favorites and discover a few new ones. (I've said this before, but I always appreciate that you spotlight films playing on Criterion.)
Ritter would have been a great winner for this film.
I have a soft spot for her performance in The Mating Season to have given her the prize, though honestly she's the lead in that film but put in supporting because actual supporting player Gene Tierney was a major star at the time.
However I would never have complained had Thelma won twice and this is definitely the role that required her to work the furthest from her stock in trade image. I found the picture one that grew in my estimation with repeated viewings but Thelma's work was a POW from the first scene the first time I saw it.