edwagreen Tired of his hum-drum life, insurance executive Dick Powell falls for Lizabeth Scott, whose boyfriend embezzled funds so that she could live a high-style life. Imprisoned now, he soon learns from Raymond Burr, a private detective who has really fallen for the Scott character, that Powell and Scott have been carrying on. Truth be told, Scott still has deep feelings for her boyfriend, loathes Burr and breaks off with Powell when she sees he is married with a child.What ensues is one tragic event after another leading to justifiable homicide on the part of Powell and Scott killing Burr for giving her newly freed boyfriend a gun to kill Powell.Jane Wyatt plays an almost Father Knows Best character mother in what turns out to be a tale of only having the good life and not getting involved.Powell's performance is rather restrained but effective and Burr steals the scenes he is in-a brutal person who shall stop at nothing to get the Scott character. Femme fatale? Scott is an innocent person drawn into this situation by circumstances, even beyond her control.

Cristi_Ciopron A crime drama with Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Burr (who got billed 4th, but plays the 2nd lead as a psychotic detective), and directed by Toth, and the foremost highlight is the style in which the leading character is played, an acting style which very much grounds the events and balances the story; the character's initial sloth doesn't involve despair and hopelessness, so that the two types of characters, the settled bourgeois and the feverish oddballs (the mistress and the detective) don't reach each other _innerly. But this isn't inadvertent and also suits the plot's realism, as the nascent liaison is crippled, disrupted, repressed, almost like stillborn. Burr provides an astonishing performance (that makes Mitchum's otherwise deservedly celebrated pair of kindred roles seem childish and harmless by comparison).Acknowledging the awesomeness of Toth's crime movie, the decisiveness of Burr's input has to be championed as well; his performance earns him a special merit. He makes this movie what it is. His handsomeness benefited of intelligence, burliness and glamour. He takes part in making this movie a masterpiece from the standpoint of enjoyment.The movie has a small cast, and the characters define each other: how Burr and Powell are defined by the woman, how she's defined by the detective. The characters are defined mutually: the weird detective, by the woman; the leading character, also by her. And she's defined by the detective. The actors' interplay has been as challenging as it's enthralling.Powell reminded me of B. Willis, with his playful, amused, lightly ironic behavior, as in the family breakfast scene, or the evening reading; he brings his ease so that the character seems good-_natured rather than bored, he makes an almost cheerful bourgeois, more impassible than resigned (his avowal that he lacks ease would of suited more a character played by Stewart or G. Peck or someone abler of gloom). The acting styles are highly contrasting: Powell's initial calm and temperate sloth, then his indecisiveness, irresoluteness after wishing to confess that he has a family, and Lizabeth Scott and Burr's feverishness, his with that sharp artistic intelligence that made meaningful each role he has ever got. Here, his role is quite large.The direction is masterly, and gives the movie its timelessness; Toth was one of the masters of the B cinema, revered by some, and his movies are the reward of the true movie buffs. The highlight scene to me is the lovers' meeting after he has recovered from the blows and she has found out that he has a family, that scene is so reasonably treated.The cast choice proved refreshing, mainly by the unconventional lead. The romance seems a whim rather than a doomed liaison. The plot may seem a bourgeois misadventure, like in 'Cape Fear', with a bourgeois confronting the underworld, meeting and facing the disinherited, and indeed the romance remains crippled in a nascent phase, begins and is stifled, gets crippled, crushed, repressed, and perhaps this makes the emotional drive so true and effective.

Roger Burke The director, Andre de Toth, is perhaps better known for his efforts in American westerns, epic historical dramas and even the occasional war movie. Hence, to come upon a crime thriller directed by Toth in late forties Los Angeles, and which stars Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Jane Wyatt and Raymond Burr, surely, I felt, promised a taut human drama.Well, the drama is here, for sure. There is a variety of different criminal acts, including murder. The movie has Powell and Scott, two of my favorite actors of those times. The Los Angeles setting is suitably relevant for a bored, frustrated insurance agent, Johnny Forbes (Powell) who is looking for something other than same-old, same-old, day in, day out ... especially when happily(?) hitched to Sue (Jane Wyatt) and father to Tommy (Jimmy Hunt) for the rest of his sedate, suburban life....That 'something other' finally turns up, after ten story minutes or so, when Johnny meets Mona (Scott) about an insurance claim. One thing predictably leads to another until Johnny and Mona are meeting more often for more than just insurance. Into that mix stalks Mac (Burr), a slimy PI who's intent on ruining Johnny's affair because he's infatuated with Mona. And won't stop until.... Well, that's when Mona's criminal boyfriend, Smiley (Byron Barr) is freed on parole and who, after Mac has whispered a pack of lies to him, sets off, with a gun from Mac, to find Johnny to deliver his brand of rough justice. And Johnny doesn't know any of that until Smiley comes knocking at night on his suburban door....Just how the finale plays out, I leave you to savor for yourself.Powell, aided by one-liner zingers, is in full form throughout; Burr is dramatically creepy and unpleasant; lissome Scott is just so delightfully forlorn; and Wyatt shows her strength when the chips are down. All four are well cast for this story. The breakout acting though, for me, is Byron Barr with his portrayal of the jealous parolee, Smiley; not on screen for much time but he gives a truly riveting performance.As film noir, however, this is not equal to Powell's own Murder My Sweet (1944); his To the ends of the Earth (1948) and certainly not Robert Mitchum's Out of the Past (1947). And I have no quibbles about the production as a whole, except perhaps for a tedious speed boat ride as Johnny and Mona race around the coastline; or was that a metaphor for something a bit racier, maybe? Whatever ... even if the pacing is a bit slow occasionally, this effort is a thoroughly entertaining piece of forties nostalgia I'd be happy seeing again.Recommended for all. Give it 7/10.

jarrodmcdonald-1 When PITFALL ends, the audience is left with a few loose ends. But since we have come to understand the characters and what they symbolize, I think we can figure out what happens to them after the final fade out. First, I think it's implied the marriage between Powell & Wyatt will survive. She is not exactly giving him the cold shoulder at the end. Plus, it conforms with the societal belief at the time that a dutiful wife should forgive the philandering husband and remain by her man's side no matter what. Also, putting Dick Powell in this part is significant, because the way the cheating husband is cast, it is with an actor that seems like someone a wife (and the audience) can forgive. He doesn't seem as evil as Raymond Burr does.Furthermore, if Wyatt's character does not forgive Powell's, then doesn't she run the risk of seeming as bad as Scott, whose character is morally compromised in the story...? No matter what, Scott is still the 'other woman.' Anyway, we have two types of female characters (as archetypes). One can break up a family; and the other can keep it together. And after this movie ends, I think we get the idea that the family stays together, and the marriage survives.