A subway pickpocket (Richard Widmark) palms a wallet and with it a valuable piece of microfilm the wallet's owner (Jean Peters) is unwittingly transporting from one Communist agent to another. Thus begins a Cold War spy thriller/gangster noir pitting petty thieves and cheap whores against agents provocateurs in a ramshackle New York waterfront setting. Combining Fuller's intense nationalism with his crime-reporter sensibilities, Pickup goes beyond anti-Communism to become an investigation of personal loyalties and ethics on the gutter level. A mood of chilling pessimism verging on anarchism informs the whole film, and is nowhere more evident than in the audacious love story-the abusive Widmark hell-bent on getting back into Peters's purse. Humanity emanates from one unlikely source, the stool-pigeon Moe (Thelma Ritter), who sells neckties and information to the cops but who happens to be an angel. Actually shot in L.A., the film is a masterpiece of Fuller mise-en-scène.