The Next Big Thing

Pick Up On South Street (PG)
Glasgow Film Theatre, Rose Street.
Sunday 23rd September @ 4.30pm.

To mark their publication of THE DARK PAGE, the long-lost 1944 crime novel by Hollywood iconoclast Sam Fuller, GFT and Glasgow's Kingly Reprieve Books presents a special screening of Fuller's frantic slam-bang noir masterpiece, Pickup On South Street. Lowlife pickpocket Richard Widmark and B-girl Jean Peters reluctantly save the world from a communist spy ring. From the startling opening close-ups, chronicling a pursesnatch in a crowded, greasy New York subway, it develops into a torrid love story and spy thriller where the world hangs in the balance. The film is introduced by David Will, who got to know Fuller during the Edinburgh Film Festival's 1969 retrospective, the book will be launched in the GFT bar at 3.30 and available at reduced price for one day only.

and from the press release for the book -

"If you don’t like Sam Fuller, you just don’t like cinema.”~ MARTIN SCORSESE

As director and writer, Sam Fuller is revered for raw films noir like Pickup on South Street and searing war movies such as The Big Red One, earning a devoted cult of fans that has included filmmakers from Jean-Luc Godard to Quentin Tarantino, and writers from James Ellroy to George Pelecanos. Before movies, however, Fuller was a newspaperman, and a prolific novelist, blasting out books for the disreputable pulp market. Drawing on his own experience, Fuller sets this story against the vividly rendered world of Manhattan’s ravenous tabloid newspaper industry. The Dark Page is the tale of Carl Chapman, a powerful city editor turned murderer, who finds himself hunted through the pages of his own paper by the young star crime reporter he personally groomed.

First published in 1944, this fantastically readable murder story has been unavailable for decades, and never published in the UK before. A bestseller in its day – when it was awarded “Best Psychological Novel of 1944” - the novel’s page turning pace, hardboiled stance, cynical wit and grit remain surprising, as do the cinematic eye and powerhouse story-telling of its author. A gripping noir snapshot of its era, with still-pertinent observations on the workings of the tabloid press, it is one of the great rediscoveries of the year.