PICK-UP (1933)

Tight little B+ item (that’s budget, not a grade) from Paramount, standard fare, very Pre-Code, with Sylvia Sidney, the notorious Baby-Face Moll, getting out of the slammer while her husband stays in and stews.  A violent man she’s glad to see the back of, she really had little to do with his crimes in spite of the nickname.  Leaving with no more than her freedom and a fiver for her pocket, she’s glad to just get out of the rain sitting in the cab of ambitious taxi driver George Raft.  After sharing a meal and a chaste overnight at his apartment, she winds up moving in for what turns out to be less a full blown romance than an arrangement.  She is still married, not that she lets him know.  Taking a chance on a cheap, available country garage, they’re making a go of things (still living in sin, mind you) when society calls in the form of a rich amoral gal who likes the way Raft makes her engine purr.  She likes the way he makes her purr, too!  Needless to say, his new interest and Sidney’s not so old past are enough to break up the happy home.  But when the heiress goes too low, and ‘Mr. Sidney’ escapes jail to force his way back into her life (she’s secretly just gotten an unopposed annulment), the shit hits the fan and only some highly unlikely giggle-worthy courtroom melodramatics can sort it all out.  Bread & butter stuff here, more Warner Bros. than Paramount, but well cast up & down the line.  And with such distinctive leads: Sidney with her crinkly proletariat Madonna face; Raft, never much of an actor, but retaining his streamlined Art Deco facade; together they freshen a stale tale under Marion Gering’s dutiful megging.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  1933 was the year background scores started to be a regular thing in the movies.  Helped by technical advances that allowed mixed tracks without serious deterioration in sound quality.  Warners and R.K.O. were far ahead, but here you can hear Paramount trying to play catch up . . . not very well.  Odd since the studio’s musicals had been generally ahead of the field, thanks mostly to Lubitsch and Mamoulian.