Pushover

As police officer Paul Sheridan in Richard Quine’s Pushover, Fred MacMurray practically reprises his role as sex-starved patsy Walter Neff (Double Indemnity, 1944), this time sucked into the murderous web of Lona McLane (Kim Novak), girlfriend of a notorious bank robber. While staking out Lona’s apartment, Sheridan not only falls in love with her but falls into her trap: he agrees to kill her boyfriend so they can take off with his proceeds from a recent bank job. If Novak plays the devil, Dorothy Malone plays the angel, Ann Stewart, the good girl who lives next door to Lona and, unfortunately for her, stumbles into the criminal plot. Quine and cinematographer Lester White use copious shadows and wet streets at night to emphasize Sheridan’s unstoppable descent into hell; in fact, not a single scene takes place in daylight. Fun fact: Pushover is the only film in this collection based on two different novels.