Pushover is the second in a pair of film noirs that are the turning point between Quine’s early frothy musicals and his mature films. Pushover looks back to Double Indemnity in its use of a hardboiled Fred MacMurray falling fast for a femme fatale while also looking forward to Quine’s later films in its casting of Kim Novak as the fatal object of desire. The film’s plot centers on a bank heist by the boyfriend of Novak’s character; MacMurray is the cop who falls for her while keeping her under surveillance. Godard is known to have been a champion of this film and claimed it as a determining influence on Breathless.

The acute sense of isolation that is a hallmark of film noir is central to Drive a Crooked Road, one of Quine’s first non-musicals, and the film which introduced loneliness—as a subject and a mood—into the director’s work, where it remained a central idea. After directing Mickey Rooney in two musicals, Quine offered the actor one of his first dramatic roles, as a shy mechanic who is drawn into a heist by thieves looking for a getaway driver, and using a gorgeous woman as the bait. Eschewing the expressionist excess of classic 1940s noir, Drive a Crooked Road favors a straightforward realism in its depiction of the film’s Southern California setting.