Pitfall (1948)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) If you subscribe to the (accurate) theory that film noir is a style more than a set of plot elements, then Pitfall makes for an intriguing entry in the genre, both at the heart of its thematic concerns and at the periphery of what we think about when we think noir. It does, at first glance, include everything we’d expect from a noir: an ordinary man seduced into a tailspin of temptations; a femme fatale to lead the protagonist astray; a criminal element to add danger; and a jaundiced outlook that the post-WW2 social order was a façade hiding underlying rot. But the mixture of elements is not what we’d expect—writer/director André de Toth spends a lot of time detailing the tawdry affair between its all-American protagonist (Dick Powell, once again finely straddling the line between matinee idol and dark anti-hero) and a criminal’s girlfriend (the timelessly beautiful Lizabeth Scott)-an affair apparently born out of boredom and cheap thrills. (Raymond Burr also has a good turn as an element of chaos.)  The criminal element of the film remains until the end, but it’s definitely subservient to the examination of a suburban man going astray—and the surprisingly amoral conclusion does not deliver a definitive punishment for the wayward husband… while having a great deal of sympathy for the femme fatale. Long underrated as “merely an ordinary noir,” Pitfall has undergone a renewed uptick of interest in the past decade—another example of great movies in Hollywood history just waiting to be rediscovered with today’s sensibilities.