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22 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
De Toth's subversive look at the organization man gone astray, 8 August 2004
9/10
Author: bmacv from Western New York

Andre De Toth's Pitfall opens in the shaky sanctuary of post-war domestic bliss. Jane Wyatt cracks eggs into a cast-iron skillet, to be served to her insurance-claims adjuster husband Dick Powell and their tousle-haired young son; the cozy breakfast nook where they exchange morning what-if banter looks out upon a vista of the New California of subdivisions and revolving credit and sunny possibilities yet to be realized. But, as Wyatt drives Powell into downtown Los Angeles (two-car families still being around the corner), he grouses absently about his routine job and clockwork schedule before giving her a perfunctory peck on the cheek. The canker has invaded the rose. As he later confesses, he feels he's in a rut `six feet deep,' and yearns for freedom – adventure. He gets more than he bargained for.

Waiting for him in his office is `Gruesome,' private investigator Raymond Burr, who's done some legwork concerning a convicted felon who has defrauded the company. The felon (Byron Barr) squandered most of his ill-gained money showering his girlfriend (Lizabeth Scott) with furs, an engagement ring and even a little speedboat. Burr, in the course of his sleazy sleuthing, has taken quite an obsessive fancy to her, but Powell warns him off, saying he'll wrap the case up himself.

At first Scott dismisses Powell as just `a little man with a briefcase,' an assessment that tallies too well with his own worst self-image. But to no one's surprise, in this climate of Pacific air and marital dissatisfaction, he ends up taking his own fancy to her, one that turns out to be mutual. They tear around the harbor in her boat, then fritter away the rest of the afternoon in a dim cocktail lounge. He doesn't get back to hearth and home ‘till the wee small hours.

One night when his son is awakened by nightmares, Powell lectures him: `Take only good pictures and have only good dreams.' It's a case of do what I say, not what I do. By veering off from the straight and narrow, Powell has set into motion a chain of baleful events. The vindictive Burr assaults him outside his garage. Scott discovers that Powell's been hiding his life as a married father. Ex-cop Burr starts visiting Barr in stir, sowing seeds of jealousy and plans for revenge. Events converge one dreadful night with an unplanned pair of killings that leave the quick, arguably, worse off than the dead....

Jay Dratler's script (from his own novel) shows a progressive streak in dealing with the short and unpredictable fuses of controlling, potentially violent males – stalkers. The script also serves the assembled cast well. True, there's not much to be done with Wyatt, with her cap-sleeved house-dresses and finishing-school elocution, but she's more plausible than she would be two years later as a highly unlikely femme fatale in The Man Who Cheated Himself. Here, she's the distaff side of those male dictators, a wife whose ideals of suburban decorum are chiseled into cold marble (she's a faint forerunner of Joan Crawford's Harriet Craig).

But Powell gets to tap deeply into his key emotion, snappish discontent, and lets it deepen into something close to small-time tragedy. Scott, always an iconic presence but an actress with limits, finds a comfortable part as a bewildered and vulnerable victim of the men who come into her life, bidden and unbidden. Burr, billed fourth (after Wyatt!), possibly fares best. Much in demand in the late ‘40s as one of the creepiest heavies, he earned that demand by providing extra (and maybe unasked-for) dimensions to the thugs he played. Like the giant Fafner in Das Rheingold, he lets a bit of yearning, of desperation, show under all his intimidating bulk (and in sheer avoirdupois, it's one of his biggest roles).

De Toth, better remembered for his westerns and 3-D horror pix like House of Wax, made, in Pitfall, one of the more distinctive titles of the noir cycle. Not often mentioned in top-ten lists, even those of black-and-white crime films of the post-war era, it has the effrontery to situate deceit and duplicity and betrayal where it surely ought not to belong – not in road houses or tenement flats but right at the heart of a storybook American family (it's one of the more subversive films of the era).. Yes, there are lapses, chief among which is a score that keeps trying to crack corny little jokes. But in the denouement – far from unleashing a hideous storm of terror, De Toth opts for cold detachment – he casts a chill that lingers still.

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10 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Dick Powell's mid-life crisis, 12 August 2005
7/10
Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

Pitfall is about precisely that. Forty something insurance man Dick Powell is getting restless. He's seemingly achieved the American dream, wife, kid, nice home and car. And the nice wife is played by Jane Wyatt who was using this film to warm up for the queen of nice wives in the Fifties as Betty Anderson in Father Knows Best.

Powell is brought a report on a claim that one of the hired investigators Raymond Burr has. Byron Barr has embezzled money that Powell's insurance company is covering. Barr has spent the money lavishly on presents for Lizabeth Scott. Powell has to check this one out for himself. Of course he meets Lizabeth Scott and nature takes its course. Barr mean time is serving time in jail and Raymond Burr has decided to stake out Ms. Scott for himself. Or maybe the right word is stalk.

So we've got Barr serving, Burr stalking, Powell cheating, what's this Lizabeth Scott got to get all these guys hormones working in overdrive?

My description of Pitfall may have been flip up to now, but it really is a fine drama with no real heroes in it, except maybe Jane Wyatt. The best performance in Pitfall goes to Raymond Burr who is really a malevolent figure with his obsession about Scott.

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9 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Where Oh Where Is The DVD?, 24 December 2007
9/10
Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

It's sad it is now 60 years after this film was released and we still don't have this available on DVD. You even have to pay big bucks to find a used VHS copy. It's "sad" because it is a fine film noir and would make an excellent addition to anyone's noir collection. So many film noirs are now on disc, where is this one??!!

I found you can't go wrong with Dick Powell in a film noir, and Lisabeth Scott certainly ranks among the all-time femme fatales in the genre's history. Add an unlikely pair of actors like Jane Wyatt and Raymond Burr, and Director Andre de Toth and you really have an interesting "old" crime story. "Crime Wave" and "Ramrod," two other fairly unknown-but-excellent hard-bitten noirs were also done by de Toth.

I am always amazed how Powell made such a tremendous career switch from Busby Berkely crooner and romantic to the hard-boiled detective or whatever (a restless insurance agent in here, believe it or not) while Scott seems to have always owned those "loser dame" roles. Between those two and the menacing Burr, who always was that until his Perry Mason TV days, I really enjoying watching this trio.

The film also featured Harry Wild's fine noir photography. Wild was the cinematographer on at least a half dozen film noirs, beginning with "Murder My Sweet" in the beginning of the period, so he knew what he was doing.

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10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
chilling anticipation of the coming 50's, 25 May 2004
8/10
Author: shotinthetabloid from Vancouver, BC

This is an all-around great noir film, as well as a very chilling anticipation of the sterlingness of the coming 50's ethos of home and fidelity at any price. Dick Powell gives a great performance as a man so tired of life and full of malaise that he can hardly stumble through his days as an insurance adjuster and "loving" father . Raymond Burr is the antithesis of his later Perry Mason (or the good-hearted Paul Drake) as a creepy detective stalking the low-rent Lizabeth Scott. And Jane Wyatt is (unintentionally?) the scariest of them all as Powells' homemaking wife. (After her son has a nightmare, she blames his comic books - and takes them away to be burned!) Pitfall is a fine example of the type of noir film that explores not the criminal underworld but the hidden pain and loneliness of the "everyman".

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10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Dick Powell's Fine Noir Edge Hits Mark, 29 October 2002
10/10
Author: sobaok (sobaok@msn.com) from Forestville, Ca

I am always amazed at Dick Powell's transition from bouyant singing star into the shadows and uncertainties of noir classics. He's absolutely delightful in the former -- and gives joy and heart to the songs he's given. Confident, good-looking, he seems to be laughing at life. In PITFALL -- it's as if his bubble has been burst -- the "perfect" home, job, family and friends have become simply routine in his mind. By venturing into the world of beautiful loser (as far as men are concerned) Lizbeth Scott -- Powell's wanderlust is satisfied only to find he's opened a "can of worms". Powell, Wyatt, Scott and Raymond Burr are effective and believable -- and the film is paced, photographed, and scripted with intelligence -- so that the viewer easily goes along for the ride. Powell's talent as an actor is underscored here. As his outlook on things changes he redefines "what he's had all along" with an underplayed, yet genuinely felt appreciation. Burr is especially chilling as the obsessed detective sent to get the goods on Lizbeth Scott. Kudos to de Toth.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Powell protects Scott from Burr while Barr waits to get out of jail, 20 November 2007
9/10
Author: mgrindberg from Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

An insurance executive for a large company (Dick Powell) jokingly tells his wife (Jane Wyatt) as she's driving him to his office, that their lives have become a big routine. He's not really in a position to do anything about it, but when he takes over an embezzlement case from a private detective played by Raymond Burr, everything changes. Burr and Powell don't like each other, and their mutual animosity grows throughout the film when Powell gets involved with Lizabeth Scott who plays the fiancé of the jailed Byron Barr, who spent the embezzled money on gifts for her. Burr, an ex-cop, thinks he can have her, though she can't stand him, and he slips a wicked sucker punch on Powell one night while Powell is closing his garage door, warning him to stay away. Burr's part is the glue that holds much of the film together. He's insinuating, devious, but also kind of a coward. As good as Burr is, Powell seems even better. He was a born talent.

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Noir drama, but not a thriller, 4 January 2008
7/10
Author: robert-temple-1 from United Kingdom

This is a curiously static film. As it is not a thriller, no one has to bother with 'whodunnit' and the film thus ambles along as a noirish 'human drama'. The script is not particularly well done, and director Andre de Toth has abandoned pace altogether and assumed we would all find the tale as compelling as he did. Some of the concerns in the story are severely dated now, in particular the central plot element of a husband's one night stand meaning the end of the world for all concerned. Dick Powell is allowed to be far too sour, selfish, and grumpy, and treats people far too callously, to arouse much sympathy from the viewer as the lead player. Raymond Burr is more sinister, evil, spiteful, and malicious than usual in his role as persecutor of Powell and as obsessed with Lizabeth Scott to the point of insanity. Lizabeth Scott tries to prop up the film by compensating for Powell's inadequacies. We have never seen her smile so much and so eagerly and charmingly, with the same naive little girl's expression on her face which Elina Lowensohn had in 'The Wisdom of Crocodiles' (aka 'Immortality'). This is a most unexpected girly side of Lizabeth Scott, as she never smiled shyly like that at Humphrey Bogart the previous year in 'Dead Reckoning'. This film is highly watchable, but drags, and, as I said, is not exactly current in its Calvinist attitudes towards marital behaviour. It could so easily have been so much better, if the director had made Powell behave more sympathetically, had found a less sternly poe-faced wife for him (she also has one of those annoying, patronising, treacly wife voices of forties and fifties Hollywood), and had a better constructed script, so that Burr's menacing eruptions into the plot were more effectively managed. Instead, de Toth allows Burr just to pick the lock and wander into Lizabeth Scott's apartment whenever he likes, as if he were a tourist visiting Niagara Falls, make sarcastic and threatening remarks to her, while she has to stand there paralyzed because the script does not allow her to take effective action to throw him out. It is a pity this film didn't come together a bit more.

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