Thanks for the memories!

Sorry, this movie sucks

Blistering performances.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The Woman On Pier 13 is what I call one of those blacklist proof films which I'm convinced is why Robert Ryan starred in it. To convince the mastodons on the House Un-American Activities Committee that you are indeed a patriot no matter how many liberal causes you espouse you do a film like this one. Added to that it was made at RKO at that time owned by Howard Hughes. No bigger patriot around than America's number one recluse.This film has Robert Ryan a fast rising union organizer in San Francisco a happily married man to Laraine Day and idol of his brother-in-law John Agar. But he's got a deep dark secret, under his birth name he was a Communist and from what we see Communists are like street gangs, once in never out. Now top party leader Thomas Gomez wants him to make sure the dockworkers strike and tie up Pacific Coast ports. Remember this is made during the Korean War and we don't want our fighting men in Korea to get their supplies.When Ryan falls down on the job it all hits the fan and several cast members die.Since this is a Howard Hughes production you know that there has to be some sex tossed in. Sex kitten Janis Carter who's one shapely Commie sets her cap for Agar. And the females are not left out. William Talman in his feature film debut is a gigolo on call by the party. He's targeting Laraine Day, but Day is on to him and she's looking for him to lead her to Gomez after Ryan goes AWOL. I did love Talman's costume. With that checkered sports jacket and rakish bow tie I guess he represented to Hughes what the well dressed gigolo wears while working. Good thing this wasn't in color or we'd have all gone blind.HUAC must have loved this film, but it really doesn't wear well with age.

Typical anti-red propaganda, made at the height of Hollywood's scary blacklisting chapter in its history. It's all because a promising businessman (Robert Ryan), once a registered communist under a different name, has been located by an old girlfriend (Janis Carter) and exposed to the big man (Thomas Gomez), even though he wants no part of them. Carter is now involved with the brother (John Agar) of Ryan's fiancée (Laraine Day) and is trying to convert him, even though he's a staunch democrat even if he is a bit liberal.This is actually pretty enjoyable even if the motivations in making it are extremely obvious. The commies are actually identifiable as human beings, not cartoonish like other anti-Communist films (in particular "The Red Menace" and "Big Jim McLain") where the message comes at you like a 3-D movie monster. There's some really horrific violence, pretty taut for a film made during the studio era, a sign that the production code was slowly loosing steam.

Robert Ryan and Laraine Day star in "The Woman on Pier 13," along with Thomas Gomez, John Agar, Janis Carter, and William Talman. Ryan plays Brad Collins, who falls for lovely Nan practically the moment he meets her. They marry quickly, without knowing much about one another. One of the things Nan doesn't know is that Brad used to be Frank Johnson, a member of the Communist party. His ex-girlfriend (Carter) is still one, and she is working to recruit Nan's brother (Agar). Meanwhile, Brad is blackmailed into stalling union negotiations on the waterfront.This is an okay film, with Robert Ryan looking great and doing his usual fine acting job. It's interesting that while he looked taller than the other actors, he really didn't tower over them. He was 6'4" and actually had special furniture in his home to accommodate it. Here he is robust and not playing a meanie as he usually did. MGM never knew what to do with Day, so she was lent out constantly. I think she was underrated.This film really draws you in. The acting is very good, and the cinematography is great.Communism, of course, was a hot subject back in the late '40s and '50s. On paper, it sounds like it might work, which is what drew so many young people to it during the Depression years. During the blacklisting years, the fear of Communism got out of control, and people who had attended one meeting in 1935 found themselves blacklisted. Lee Grant went to the funeral of someone who was thought to be a Communist, and she didn't work for 19 years.Consequently there are many anti-Communist films. This is one, with a solid cast and some good production values.

I MARRIED A COMMUNIST (aka THE WOMAN ON PIER 13) is a thoroughly reprehensible noir, wherein the "Communist menace" is depicted as a well-organized cabal of murderous agitators on the San Francisco waterfront, headed up by Thomas Gomez. The always-solid Robert Ryan stoops just as low as Gomez does by playing a "reformed" Commie who gets sucked back into the Party in order to do dirty deeds at the docks.One has to wonder just how much power Howard Hughes, who reputedly would "test" RKO contract players' loyalty by trying to get them to make this film, really held over his charges. After all, Ryan surely cringed his way through the production considering he was running roughshod over his own strong political views, and Gomez had only a year earlier brilliantly portrayed a small-time mobster with a conscience in Polonsky's FORCE OF EVIL.But the film holds sway over the viewer in large part due to the brilliant Nicholas Musaraca cinematography, filled with inky black shadows and harsh angles, and a crackling pace which almost makes you forget what tripe you are listening to. And as noted above, at least the Commies are depicted as intellectuals who throw interesting parties (and have Cubist art on the walls), even while they're faking suicides and throwing tied up people into the San Francisco Bay.