PUSHOVER

US, 1954, 88 minutes, Black and white.
Fred Mac Murray, Philip Carey, Kim Novak, Dorothy Malone, E.G. Marshall.
Directed by Richard Quine.

Pushover will remind many audiences of Double Indemnity. First of all because Fred Mac Murray is the star in both films and his character has to go through drama and melodrama in similar circumstances. While in Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder’s classic, the issue is insurance, in Pushover he is a policeman set to guard the girlfriend of one of the gangsters who commits a large robbery. Kim Novak is the gangster’s moll, working her wiles with the policeman in charge of her in order to get him to get the money.

The familiar material is quite well done and there is a good supporting cast. It is also one of Kim Novak’s earliest films. She was to make Picnic the following year and Vertigo in 1958.

The film was directed by Richard Quine, an actor during the 1940s who began direction in 1948. This was his first bigger-budget film. He moved into lighter material with So This Is Paris, My Sister Eileen and The Solid Gold Cadillac. He was to direct Kim Novak in Bell Book and Candle, Strangers When We Meet and The Notorious Landlady. Some of his lighter-touch films of the 1960s include Paris When It Sizzles, How To Murder Your Wife and Sex and the Single Girl. Towards the end of his life he made two spoofs of classics with Peter Sellers, The Prisoner of Zenda and The Fiendish Plot of Doctor Fu Manchu.

1. Was this a good example of the 'crime and police' genre? The individual in the face of justice?

2. The appropriateness of black and white photography, realistic sets and streets, the grim atmosphere, the musical accompaniment?

3. The significance and irony of the title? What Is a ‘pushover'? Who was the ‘pushover’?

4. How did the film create and maintain interest in its themes, individual corruption, greed, love, truth, death?

5. The film’s presentation of the police mind and the criminal mind? The close link? The individual of justice on the brink of corruption?

6. How did the film make Paul Sheridan central? Did it develop his character as a man? Or did it portray him as a pawn in this social crisis? His poor pay, family background, his work as a job, watching Lona, the fascination and seduction, the need to manoeuvre, his love and lust? Leading to murder and deceit? The inevitability of death?
What message was communicated via this character and his life?

7. The character of Lona? As a moll, her coy manner, leading Paul on, being led by him? What was the real nature of her character? How desperate did she become? Her facing of the truth? The irony at the end?

8. Mc Allister, Sheridan’s co-worker, the contrast with the honest policeman, his belief in the truth, being deceived and its effect on him, the possibility of justice?

9. Eckstrom, his administration, supervision of the work, the man to discover the truth?

10. The role of Ann in the film: the ordinary bystander, as becoming involved, the repercussions on her life, her need for the truth? (the romantic background?)

11. The significance of the film in its detail of work, plans, the cover-ups?

12. The fatalism of the film? Social pressures, human nature, the attraction of corruption, the inevitability of death?