Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Lancoor A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

writers_reign Just as Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton gave us a horror film without any horror in Cat People so we have a thriller without any thrills in Pitfall. What it does have is a highly believable married couple in Dick Powell and Jane Wyatt, a Machiavellian villain in Raymond Burr and the cliché 'bad' girl with a heart in Lizbeth Scott. Had he seen Double Indemnity and had the sense he was born with Dick Powell would have run a mile from the insurance business in Los Angeles cause it's dollars to donuts you're bound to run into a Barbara Stanwyck or, as in this case, Lizbeth Scott and wind up behind the eight ball. In this case we have two adults- Powell and Scott - dealing maturely with the situation but the psychotic Burr keeps frustrating them. Excellent 'B' picture.

evanston_dad Like so many movies from the late 40s and early 50s, "Pitfall" is labeled as film noir when it really isn't one. It's really just a domestic drama that morphs into a crime thriller in its last few minutes. It's fairly slow and a bit talky. But its frank treatment of middle class malaise and infidelity at a time when an idealized version of the American dream was being sold to Americans wholesale makes it an almost fascinating artifact from late 1940s cinema.Dick Powell is the solid and reliable family man who's landed so deeply in a rut that he can barely see out of either side. He gets it on with Lizabeth Scott (because who wouldn't?) while perfect 1950s housewife Jane Wyatt stays at home with the little boy. But everything threatens to unravel when Scott's ex-con boyfriend decides he wants revenge on the man who stepped out with his girl while he was in prison and threatens to unbalance Powell's picture postcard home life in the worst way imaginable.Notable about "Pitfall" is that Powell seems almost more concerned about his wife finding out he had an affair than he does about being killed, which feels authentic. When caught up in a tangled web of lies, I think human instinct is that almost any outcome would be preferable to being exposed. "Pitfall" is candid about infidelity in a way that was rare for pictures of this time period, but almost as shocking is its acknowledgement that the so-called American dream post-WWII Americans were told they should be content with was actually a big bore.Powell is sardonic; Scott is sexy; Wyatt is dull. And Raymond Burr is creepy, just....creepy.Grade: B

Robert J. Maxwell Someone once said that the cure for boredom is curiosity, but that there is no cure for curiosity.Dick Powell as the bored insurance adjuster or whatever he is, is bored with his typical family and his typical work. Every day is the same, although his wife, the elegant Jane Wyatt, is conceivably livening up his nights.Raymond Burr is a private investigator working for the Global Inadequate Circumcisional Jupiter Atlas Mutual Insurance Company and Perloo Society, and he twigs Powell to the fact that some stolen goods can be recovered from an innocent recipient, Elizabeth Scott. "Some dish," drools the creepy Burr who blinks only once in the entire movie. (I counted.) Powell is as rude and dismissive of Burr as he is with his family and everyone else -- until he tumbles into the arms of Scott. The guy is wholly smitten. And who wouldn't be? Scott isn't a knockout or a very good actress but she flings herself around Powell, like an amoeba's pseudopod around a food particle, and practically consumes him. Observing all this from a distance is the macabre figure of the jealous Burr, who happens to be the most clever person in the entire movie.Well, it's a bad situation all right and Powell, who seems to have three pounds of feathers for a brain, tries to straighten it out but just makes it worse. But he's not alone in his stupidity. The ex boyfriend who gave Scott the stolen goods is in the slams, and Burr visits him and plants all sorts of suspicions about Scott's relationship with Powell.The boyfriend is Byron Barr and he can't act, but he still manages to project the character of the most stupid person in the movie. Barr is about to be released and Scott visits him, hoping they can start off again, clean. But Barr is fuming with jealousy. Scott has shown herself to be a sensitive and perceptive person so far, but when she presses her case with the outraged and glandular Barr she joins the ranks of the unspeakably dumb.The plot is from a mold similar to that of "Double Indemnity" but less gripping. The performances are professional enough, except for Byron Barr, and in fact Raymond Burr is pretty convincing.

jarrodmcdonald-1 When PITFALL ends, the audience is left with a few loose ends. But since we have come to understand the characters and what they symbolize, I think we can figure out what happens to them after the final fade out. First, I think it's implied the marriage between Powell & Wyatt will survive. She is not exactly giving him the cold shoulder at the end. Plus, it conforms with the societal belief at the time that a dutiful wife should forgive the philandering husband and remain by her man's side no matter what. Also, putting Dick Powell in this part is significant, because the way the cheating husband is cast, it is with an actor that seems like someone a wife (and the audience) can forgive. He doesn't seem as evil as Raymond Burr does.Furthermore, if Wyatt's character does not forgive Powell's, then doesn't she run the risk of seeming as bad as Scott, whose character is morally compromised in the story...? No matter what, Scott is still the 'other woman.' Anyway, we have two types of female characters (as archetypes). One can break up a family; and the other can keep it together. And after this movie ends, I think we get the idea that the family stays together, and the marriage survives.