Kim Novak

No Pushover

Male cinephiles tend to get all gaga over Kim Novak because she was in a ton of auteurist movies and...well...look at her.

This is Kim in Pushover, one of those t.v.-style late noirs that have been packaged so perceptively by Columbia and the like.  Directed by the solid but rarely inspired Richard Quine, one can sum up the pleasures of Pushover in pretty much two words (Kim and Novak) and a few choice images, including this one, which one wonders how in the world they ever got away with.

Perhaps not SFW

But it is the ambiguity of the look in the car mirror that is the key Novak image.  What in the world is being those eyes and that sloping nose?  Certainly most of the suspense of Pushover is wondering to what extent Novak's character is controlling the sap played by an rather sad-looking Fred McMurray, long past his leading man days, to do her bidding.   If she is really in control at all.