If anything it is a melding of styles, and the low deadpan voice of George raft keeps things as close to the noir highway as we will ever get.
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Snogga Snogga
A Bullet for Joey (1955) |
And yet the style is the same; the sets and the suits have not changed, or if anything have become less confident, and less boastful of their novelty and sinister qualities.
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Unsnogga-snogga
A Bullet for Joey (1955) |
It's almost as if film noir begins to age in the middle of the 1950s, not just because of the advent of Color Cinema, but because crime was becoming corporate and political; the family unit was becoming a veritable cultural battleground as the motorcycle and teenage movies were aching to show; and because of something as plain as innocence.
So corporate and Cold War crimes are the real thing, but there is an issue with titling department, who decided that A Bullet for Joey was appropriate. Its is certainly an appropriate film noir title, evoking both fate and violence, but also in an individual sense, almost inviting viewers to care for this Joey,. before the film even starts.
This is not the title for a Cold War gangster-spy-police-procedural hybrid, it is a title for film noir. The title of this film more than anything evokes the impassioned and ill-fated descent of a hero, or anti-hero; and this is not George Raft's character.
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Death on the Highway - - not a bullet for Joey
A Bullet for Joey (1955)
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The real world of film noir, is after all a world of innocence. Through the criminality and seething waters of psychology, there is still something predictable about noir, and something in its morality remained constant as society changed. Crime was a metaphor for any kind of falling away from that morality, and everything always tied up according to codes; some unwritten; others like the Hayes Code, written.
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| Card game visible in the urban night -- A Bullet for Joey (1955) |
Something, and it is hard to say what, keeps A Bullet for Joey from being passionate and fun. Something stops A Bullet for Joey enjoying itself, or stepping gaily into the unknown, even for a minute; a lack of care which might best be summed up by making the observation that there is NO ONE EVEN CALLED JOEY in this film.
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| A Bullet for Somebody - - urban sniper in A Bullet for Joey (1955) |
Joe — aye, there is a Joe. But nobody even tips a hat to the title, by calling him 'Joey' at any point. Leaving a strange combination of tastes in the mouth. There is nothing wr4ong with this film noir, but neither is there anything that is memorable, or outstanding — not even anything outstandingly bad.
The performances seem tame, and automatic — other than that of Audrey Totter, who is probably the star. And the reason for this lack of passion is that film noir is about to lose its way; in 1955, film noir is about to become less relevant, perhaps as it gives birth to the teenage movie, and the darker political conspiracies which make up the best examples of film noir from that later period.
As a spy film, A Bullet for Joey may not be aptly named, but it is in total much more of a spy flick. Viewers will enjoy the miniature cameras which are used to capture secrets, and which fascinate the director Lewis Allen.
The trail is hot, and it is even possible to imagine there is a good script lurking far beneath the rather anodyne action. And in honesty, the seriousness of what is at stake must be what is causing everyone to pause before they consider how to perform. For nothing much comes light.
There are hints and suggestions that what is at stake in this run-around-romp, is nothing less than a nuclear secret of sorts, if not an actual McGuffin-style nuclear contraption of some kind. Interestingly, A Bullet for Joey was released a month or so before Kiss Me Deadly, also 1955, which makes a dramatic virtue of this subject like no other movie ever has.
The handling of the nuclear problem is like everything else in A Bullet For Joey; conservatively hinted at, in a rather non-committal manner, almost as if nobody on set was willing to take an actual lead, and tell the audience in as plain or dark detail as possible - what the hell was going on.
There must be a tidal flotsam of flicks like this that don't quite make it, but yet which tick the boxes their producers were aiming for. Everything in A Bullet For Joey is to a strange degree quite standard. There aren't any majorly sagging scenes of dullness, but neither is there much in the way of excitement, or even any unusually entertaining action - the kind of surprises we love in film noir.
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