Pushover (1954)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Pushover (1954) – R. Quine

Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak are better known for other roles (in Double Indemnity, 1944, and Vertigo, 1958, respectively) and those other roles haunt this late noir.  For example, MacMurray plays a cop who decides to commit a crime with a suspect/femme fatale and Novak, in her debut, plays a woman complicit in an earlier crime who becomes the target of the male gaze (a stakeout) and the object of MacMurray’s obsession.  Pushover can’t match those top ten noirs but it does rise above a lot of other B pictures through its careful plotting which finds Novak always under surveillance by the cops and MacMurray on the stakeout constantly surrounded by his unsuspecting peers.  Their game is to kill Novak’s boyfriend and steal the proceeds of his recent bank robbery and somehow get away with it, taking advantage of MacMurray’s position.  Of course, there are a few complications and, in the end, not everyone behaves rationally.  Worth a look, especially for film noir aficionados.