ACF Critic Series #25: Teachout on ‘Pitfall’

 

The noir series is back: Terry Teachout and I talk Pitfall, the 1948 thriller starring Dick Powell (by then turned to tough guy roles in dark drams) and Raymond Burr (before he turned into the affable champion of justice, Perry Mason). Lizabeth Scott is the femme fatale, but in a very interesting variation, and Jane Wyatt, before she became the adorable wife on Father Knows Best, is a tougher middle-class suburban housewife whose life is endangered by her husband’s restlessness. This is a movie about risk and insurance, about our desire for safety and the temptations of a manlier life when these problems first became apparent in post-war America. It’s as pleasing as interesting now–a remarkable bit of movie-making, done outside the studios, without a great budget, but with a remarkable insistence on getting the story right. This is what middlebrow was when it was taken for granted–serious storytelling about serious moral problems, with very good acting and no nonsense.

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Published in Podcasts
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  1. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

    • #1
  2. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Yes! Classes up the joint, I should think-

    • #2
  3. Duane Oyen Member
    Duane Oyen
    @DuaneOyen

    What is the blankety-blank point of having a download button if it is a FLAC file that does not play on mp3 players?

    • #3
  4. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Huh. I didn’t think about this. We’re looking to get formats with better audio quality–hence flac. But yeah, mp3 players aren’t going to do it. I’ll ask around, see what the popular preference is. Thanks for letting me know. Meanwhile, see if you can listen to it in a browser, it’s a good show.

    • #4
  5. Duane Oyen Member
    Duane Oyen
    @DuaneOyen

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    Huh. I didn’t think about this. We’re looking to get formats with better audio quality–hence flac. But yeah, mp3 players aren’t going to do it. I’ll ask around, see what the popular preference is. Thanks for letting me know. Meanwhile, see if you can listen to it in a browser, it’s a good show.

    Love ya, Titus, but I never sit in front of my computer listening to anything.  Podcasts are for when I am doing physical work and need to occupy my brain!  Doesn’t SoundCloud have some way to choose the file format? 

    BTW, audio quality for talking shows is actually a bit of a hindrance for those of us old people who have some hearing issues; we need clear, not mellifluous. 

    I actually deliberately buy earphones without advertised hi-fi bass response (as long as the impedance is still 16 ohms, not 32), because low freq (often bass boost) interferes with the high frequencies I need for clarity to understand the words spoken.  My mp3 player allows some tone shaping, and I roll off bass, boost highs to make up for my congenital hearing loss in the above 2000 CPS ranges.

    • #5
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