Pushover

In 1954, Kim Novak made her debut onscreen in this forgettable minor noir. The running time is short, but the story still feels bloated and stretched out, and none of the beats feel shocking or anything more than routine. It’s fine, but there’s nothing here worth a repeat visit.

Pushover plays like lukewarm leftovers of Double Indemnity, complete with Fred MacMurray going from good guy to rogue cop over a pretty dame. Where Pushover really stumbles is in its inability to generate chemistry between Novak and MacMurray. The central conceit is that Novak’s a gangster’s moll seduces his cop into bumping off her hoodlum boyfriend, stealing his recent robbery earnings, and running off into the sunset. Novak’s beauty goes a long way towards selling the premise, but she seems awkward and unsure here, refusing to play icy seductress or convincing bad girl, and the eventual revelation that she’s merely naïve and secretly sweet.

Pulp dialog requires a delicate balance, which authors like Dashiell Hammett and James Ellroy excel at, while Pushover does not. The erotic dialog in the early scenes between MacMurray and Novak are groan worthy in their stilted, awkward flirtations. There’s no heat here, nor is there much heat in the secondary romance between nurse Dorothy Malone and good cop Phil Carey. Carey’s penchant for spying on Malone’s nurse is just creepy, and the continual circling back to this point only makes the valiant Carey appear as unseemly and disturbed as MacMurray’s later scenes.

At least Pushover has some pleasing images and a solid score to back it up. MacMurray’s central performance is nicely done, even if it feels like something that we’ve seen him do before with greater results. This is the crux of the film, at only 88 minutes, there’s not enough here to truly keep you enthralled, and its repetitious story beats wear thin as it marches on. It’s not a bottom of the barrel pick, but it’s a middling effort that distinctly lacks much in inspiration.