Sadly dismissed by many as Red Scare propaganda, Robert Stevenson’s The Woman on Pier 13 combines gorgeous B&W cinematography, effective storytelling, and harrowing brutality into an exciting noir suspense thriller. Released in 1949, the same year as the founding of Communist China and the development of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear weapon, and just as Senator Joseph McCarthy was emerging as the face of anti-Communism, the film’s political message is heavy-handed for sure (If you’re a communist, you are evil and you will be destroyed); viewers for whom that’s too distracting might enjoy the film more by substituting the mafia for “the party” in your mind. Robert Ryan plays Brad Collins, a shipping executive recently married to Nan (Laraine Day), who’s unaware of his previous membership in the Party back when he was dating Christine Norman (the scene-stealing, sinfully under-appreciated Janis Carter), who continues to carry a torch and is assigned to recruit him back. Brad’s inner conflict is exacerbated by the increasing violence around him — characters are run over, flung from 20-story windows, hogtied and drowned — and by his hollow resistance to the blackmail and threats of party leader Vanning (Thomas Gomez). Legendary cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca paints the San Francisco piers with luminous poetry, the long docks at night striped with light, the warehouse headquarters a cavern of lurking shadows.