Pickup on South Street

The Film, Pickup on the South Street was a film that made to reflect the tough times during the Cold War era at home. The main character of the film did pocket picking as his survival tool, he was nothing but an average American citizen. One day he pocket picked an important film out of a girl’s purse that revealed later to be an important massage that belonged to the communist party. He did not know who to trust during a chaos time, and he was afraid that the film would fell into wrong people’s hands, so he kept it in secret. The film really demonstrated people’s lives really well during the Cold War, down from pocket picker, up to government officials. This film is like a remake of what Foner talked in his book, people were in constant fear of communism, even though majority of them did not even know what communism stood for, and as a result people did not know who to trust. The movement of anticommunism was more of a domestic battle than a national battle.

We learned that people were constantly put to the test to oppose the idea of communism, and they did. Even though most of them did not even know what the ideology behind communism was, but they opposed it with passion. The characters in the film never once backed down from the threat that was posed by the communists. I believe the reason that they stood on their grounds so strongly was because they knew communism might not threat their lives, but it did threat their freedom, so they risked everything they had, even their lives to protect it. They believed that the foundation of the U.S. was built on the idea of freedom.

I believe the film revealed a lot regarding on the gender issue, the main female character was put on an important mission that would probably be given to a male. It tells us that women were granted more freedom than they ever had, females could be trusted with important missions and tasks, and they were more than reliable.

My favorite part of the movie was when female character took the bullet from the hands of a communist, she risked her live to protect something which held no value to her, the only reason she protected it was it had value to her country, and it would threat her freedom if it fall into the wrong hands.