Noir Watch: The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Watched:  10/22/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Stevenson

We're still in the late 1940's with the release of The Woman on Pier 13 (1949), and there's still more of the grit in the movies that audiences felt reflected the post-war moment than we'd see five or six years later, even in noir.

A movie about the ruthlessness of American Communists and romance twisted to obsession into cruelty, the movie finds us alongside newlyweds Brad and Nan Collins (Robert Ryan and Laraine Day).  Ryan plays a guy who came up the hard way, from a San Francisco stevedore to the newly appointed Vice President of a shipping company.  

He's met Day as the decorator for his office and married her within two weeks - something that movies treated as fairly *normal* until the 1960's.*  During their honeymoon, two things occur.  

1)  Day says "you don't know anything about me" and Ryan says "baby, our lives started the day we met.  I don't need to know anything else."  Red flag!  Red flag!  

2)  Ryan's ex-girlfriend shows up in the form of tall blonde Janis Carter playing Christine Norman.  She's a fast talking city-gal in fancy clothes, so we've set up the virgin/not-virgin dichotomy in play.

But the real hook is that Ryan's Brad Collins used to be Frank Johnson - a communist!  And when he knew Christine, they were both commies, which she still is, despite capitalist success.  And she's on a mission - having fingered Frank/ Brad.  The Commies want Brad to mess up the union negotiations down at the docks.  

The Commies send for Brad and their boss - in the form of the always phenomenal Thomas Gomez.  Gomez informs Brad he'll not just tell people he was a Fellow Traveler, he'll also reveal to everyone that Brad killed a guy during a strike.  Apparently Commies have very thorough and incriminating after-action reports, which they hand-write. themselves?

To keep Brad on a short leash, the ex starts seeing his brother-in-law played by (sigh) John Agar. 

SPOILERS

This movie is very bad at understanding that people in extreme circumstances may go to extreme measures.  In short, our lead is a coward and rather than face the music, and he throws all the dock workers and his friends in the corporate offices under the bus - and he knows he will continue to do so.  

But the hook that the Communists have people write their own reports incriminating themselves seems... kind of nuts?   Did real life commies do this?  Man, I have no idea, but keeping a record of crimes your people have been doing, even as blackmail material, seems like a good way to ensure the FBI is going to nab you and that no one ever wants to join your org once word gets out (it is, of course, a thing cults do all the time).  

But it seems Gomez's character is absolutely asking to get bumped off if Ryan figures he's @#$%ed no matter what he does.  

In a way,  the movie accidentally argues that capitalists are all cowards protecting their own lot.

In the movie, Gomez also does the right thing and sends a goon to run over John Agar.  However, in the context of this movie it's because he's Brad's brother-in-law.  The action sends the rest of the movie into play.  Which includes Ryan's commie getting killed at the end for the Hayes-approved reason of being a *former* commie, which seems like a bad lesson.  

In 1949, don't you want people to stop being communists and see some light in becoming a capitalist?  

The movie does have a more nuanced take on Unions than any rhetoric I've heard in my lifetime, or at least since the 1980's as dumb ol' Agar sorts out if he's a Union man or should be a commie.  And I admit, Janis Carter makes a persuasive argument for joining up.

The movie is billed as a Laraine Day movie, and she finally manages to become interesting in the back 1/3rd - before that, you absolutely wonder why Ryan is so ga-ga over her.  She's fine, but you could have dropped anyone into this role, I think.  

Anyway, for top Thomas Gomez, I recommend it.  It's exciting but not the most brilliant movie I've ever seen.

*Were Americans doing this?  I have no idea.  I've never figured it out.