Pitfall (1948): Good Dreams Are Harder to Keep

"Life is a betrayal. And you know, sometimes you betray yourself too you know. Let’s have the guts to admit it. There isn’t anybody born here lately, who didn’t play dirty sometime somewhere in his life. So why do you hide it? Truth, honesty, that’s my key. " ~ André de Toth

I was intrigued to learn that the Film Noir Foundation had included André De Toth's Pitfall (1948) in their Noir City 8 event in San Francisco from Jan. 22nd to Jan. 31st, 2010. To pique your interest in this fascinating take on the frayed seams in the American Dream, I dug out of my files an appreciation of this film. If you can't get to the Noir City 8 festival you may find a DVD of this movie, which is scheduled to be released in May, 2011. It's worth a look for one of Dick Powell's more interesting dyspeptic performances as John Forbes, an insurance investigator who becomes intrigued with that sphinx-like Lizabeth Scott, an actress who evokes in this viewer a mixture of suspicion, sympathy, and grudging respect for her independent characterizations.

"Take only good pictures and have only good dreams, " Dick Powell tells his son as he tucks him in at night in Ptifall (1948).

Dick Powell urges his frightened son to do the above when the boy awakens from a nightmare. If only Dick could've taken his own advice in director André De Toth's dark little crime caper, Pitfall (1948). Powell, entering his entertaining, edgier period in high gear after Murder, My Sweet (1944), Cornered (1945) and Johnny O'Clock (1947), here plays a peevish insurance investigator who is not quite living a life of quiet desperation, (he's too articulate and funny for that thanks to the film's author, Jay Dratler & the actor's own spin on salty dialogue).

Desk sergeant Dick Wessell shares a moment of mutual disgust with the world with insurance investigator Dick Powell in Pitfall (1948).

The post-war world, with its disappointments and loss of purpose is implicit in all the action of the characters, beginning with the family. The family members, played by Dick Powell, Jane Wyatt, and Jimmy Hunt are feeling the pinch as their traditional place as breadwinner, homemaker, and hope for the future come under scrutiny and each of them expresses their underlying, often inchoate anxiety in their treatment of one another. Each of them continue to act in certain accepted, traditional patterns as the film begins, without being able to articulate their dissatisfaction fully. The father figure (Powell), as the most dynamic character who interacts with the broadest range of people within and without the middle class, is, naturally, the first family member to acknowledge some conscious awareness of the increased hollowness of playing a part. More to the point, he's finding that the checklist cataloging the trappings of the American Dream may not be long enough for him.

Jane Wyatt as Sue Forbes

WIFE

Played by a wonderfully steely Jane Wyatt, who seems to understand the cold ways of the world better than the often childish characters around her. She chides, teases and manipulates the two men in her family, all the time assuming that they neither fear nor know as much as she does about life.

Driving her husband to the office, Wyatt's character may seem too smug, but there are hints in her conversation with her sarcastic husband that she is aware of something beneath the surface of their marriage that she is unable or unwilling to acknowledge. As Powell wonders aloud how and why they and their peers behave as they do, she seems to be more willing to accept the reality of a routine, superficially safe existence, though there is a look from Wyatt as he leaves the car that is more eloquent than the dialogue. Wyatt, who will forever be cast in the role of the mother in Father Knows Best was more skilled than she ever had chance to fully demonstrate. She suggests a wariness and tension beneath her well-groomed serenity in this film, as well as in Elia Kazan's Boomerang (1947) and Gentleman's Agreement (1947)--though that could be a reflection of Kazan's own admitted mixed feelings about the allure of patrician women (see his autobiography for more about that).

Jimmy Hunt as Tommy Forbes

CHILD

An apparently average and annoying boy who might sleep in his roller skates if they let him, though those pesky dreams he experiences make one wonder a bit how deep those shallow waters run. Jimmy Hunt, who was so memorable as the boy who would try to warn the unthinking adult world about the Invaders from Mars (1953) a few years later. Here, his vulnerable, freckle-faced eagerness masks an anxiety of a more earthly sort, as he plays a boy whose restlessness and night terrors reflect the subterranean tensions in his household. His position in the household as low man on the totem pole almost invariably means that he never understands what is happening in front of him, even if his instincts clearly give him early warning radar that the adults hide under their poses as archetypal Mom, Dad, wife and husband. Only the kid knows better on a conscious level and in his utter guilelessness he cannot hide his worry.

Dick Powell voices his stultifying disinterest in his insurance job in conference with his boss, Selmer Jackson.

JOB

At an Insurance Company, where Claims Investigator Powell thinks he knows the score of this predetermined career path, even as he shudders inwardly at his own sense that his life is apparently leading straight to a living death before the inevitable physical one. This realization makes Dick feel, well, claustrophobic, to say the least, as he reveals in several snarky remarks he drops when entering the office and with his immediate superior, played by Selmer Jackson, who appears to be doing his best imitation of two more expensive actors, Lewis Stone and Samuel S. Hinds.

Powell even seems bored with the one person who must bring some tinge of sin and danger into his working life, a rather gamy private detective played by the underrated Raymond Burr during his pre-Perry Mason days.

Raymond Burr in Pitfall

Burr often seemed engaged by film noir directors wanting to cast an actor who could imply, with only a glance or a shifting of his bulk, almost every base human fault. At the same time, there was always a tarnished and usually unhealthy longing in his characters that made them touching and repellent. I find my reactions to these types of characters all the more remarkable since, from the time that I first saw him as the only observer of the hapless Godzilla who understood the monster--and, of course as Perry Mason on tv--I thought he was a highly sympathetic actor. I have often wondered how Burr felt about this noir period of his career, and in one interview I came across he merely described this period blandly as when he "made 90 pictures in ten years between 1946 and 1956. Most of them were not with Hitchcock." Maybe he wanted to forget these films, though he never stinted on his roles, always bringing them them to life in an almost baroque way that suggested so much mystery about the sadists and malcontents he played so well.

Lizabeth Scott brings color into Dick Powell's bland existence in Pitfall (1948).

Powell gradually becomes rather thoughtlessly involved with a seemingly guileless semi-bad girl, played by Lizabeth Scott, who is--perhaps unwittingly--a receiver of stolen goods that Dick needs to recover for his company. At first he keeps it on a business basis, though eventually, as he hears her spin her story about her connection to the man who funneled stolen goods through her, he is intrigued. Unfortunately, Raymond Burr also was intrigued prior to Powell's arrival on the scene of the crime.

Dick Powell self-consciously avoiding the gaze of the dangerous female (Lizabeth Scott) in Pitfall (1948)

It's one of Scott's most interesting roles. She seems rather nice, even vulnerable and confused, though of course, she's also involved with a guy who showered her with the stolen worldly goods before he was sent away to the slammer. Dick Powell's character seems to find her appealing as much for her implicit promise of freedom from responsibility as for her blonde allure, which also attracts Burr at his most predatory.
The story becomes more of a duel between Burr and Powell as the straight arrow takes a brief walk on the wild side. He enjoys some of the freedom he longs for, though it leaves the taste of ashes in his mouth.

An inarticulate Dick Powell tries to justify his actions to himself as much as his wife, Jane Wyatt in Pitfall (1948).

He has betrayed the trust of his wife and child, discarding that cumbersome integrity he carried in his professional life, takes a whale of beating from his "co-worker" Mr. Burr, and sinks to his level in exacting revenge. Oh, and the knight errant also allows his mistress to take a fall for him, while he scurries back to the relatively familiar safety of his ho hum domestic life. There are no easy answers for Powell's John Forbes, though he must surely have questions when he looks at himself in the mirror each morning. 

Dick Powell's wife and son tend to his wounds in Pitfall (1948).

Gradually, the order of the universe is restored, but what a ride director Andre de Toth and his cohorts give us. The end is almost literally wrapped up in a big bow when Wyatt 'fesses up to Powell in their car that yeah, she sensed something was wrong, but just knew--somehow--that things would work out okay in the end, leaving us wondering if maybe the American Dream is just wishful thinking sometimes.  I loved every dark corner of this movie's wizened noir heart.

In an interview with Patrick Francis for the Film Noir Foundation shortly before Andre de Toth's death in 2002, he alluded to his own attitude toward the complex character enacted so well by Dick Powell in this film, as well as to his basic view of human nature:

Another interesting Andre de Toth film, Crime Wave (1954), was reviewed on this blog here.

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Other recommended online sources about this movie:

Driftin': In Tribute to Andre de Toth by Adrian Danks at Senses of Cinema

The Noir of the Week review of Pitfall (1948) also has an interesting take on the movie.

Glenn Erickson's review of Pitfall (1948) on DVDTalk is also stimulating reading.

John Greco's review of Pitfall (1948) was slipped in over on NoirBabes.

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Many thanks to Klondike Cass for sharing his copy of Pitfall with me.