Excellent film noir where Fred Mac Murray repeats his falling into evil as he did ten years earlier in the memorable "Double Indemnity."In her film debut, Kim Novak already showed problematic acting as the moll of a bank robber who Fred, the cop, falls for and the two plan to get the money that her boyfriend had stolen in a bank robbery.With the exception of "The Eddy Duchin Story," and "Jeanne Eagels," both films where she was terrific, Novak just doesn't put it over in the role of the moll.The role of the moll would have been better suited for Dorothy Malone, who would cop a supporting Oscar two years later in the great "Written on the Wind." Instead, Malone is relegated in playing the nurse next door, who is Mac Murray's ultimate downfall when she keeps meeting him at the most inopportune time for him.We have a real good suspense thriller here as other police begin to piece together what is really going on in discovering that Fred is the real culprit here.

Pushover is only 88 minutes long but it isn't very tightly paced. On the other hand, there are some nice touches. The claustrophobic feel of the picture (no doubt, partly due to the low budget), and the way the protagonist, a police detective (well played by Fred MacMurray) becomes more and more involved in the life of a woman he's observing on a stakeout, are highlights. Kim Novak plays the woman; she's inexperienced but has her usual intensity and sincerity, and of course, she's gorgeous. A small film that has a too-deliberate pace, but some intelligence and that sense of inexorable fate that the best noirs have.

I enjoyed the good performances from all the cast, though no surprises here from Fred MacMurray, in this late noir however the actors were all severely let down by the very flat direction of Richard Quine in what could have been a taut thriller instead of what we have here, than is a Double Indemnity wannabe. The film's atmosphere though is greatly helped with a redeeming feature - the weather and in particular the rain, the wet streets.I wonder if Hitchcock had seen this movie before casting Kim Novak in Vertigo? She moves through the movie like a somnambulist. It's worth pointing out the sweater she wears in early scenes which looks forward to the sweater girls that followed.

But it's not as effective as either noir, despite the presence of the former's Fred MacMurray in a similar role, and the voyeuristic titillation of the latter (much peering through binoculars at apartments across the courtyard, and nobody ever draws the blinds). He's a good-cop-turned-bad, seducing a bank robber's girlfriend (Kim Novak in her film debut, voluptuous as all getout but not trying very hard) and falling hard for her. The initial seduction is fun, much like Walter Neff squaring off with Babe Diedrickson (sp?) in "Double Indemnity." But the pair aren't ideally matched--by this time, MacMurray looks paunchy and less than leading-man suave, and his underplaying and her nonplaying leave us not caring that much whether the pair can pull their caper off. Maybe if he and the more vital Philip Carey, as his partner, had switched roles, there would be more heat. Some sharper dialog would help, too. Director Richard Quine shows a fondness for close-up shots of meaningless details, presumably just to throw the audience off. The noir mechanics include harsh black-and-white photography with an emphasis on the black, a pileup of bodies, and, most curiously, constant rain in what should be a sunny Los Angeles setting. A good enough time-waster, and it makes the most of its low budget, but more care could have produced something much better.