A Bullet For Joey - Edward G. Robinson

Directed by Lewis Allen
USA 1955

With fear of communism running rampant, Hollywood scripts of the 1950s often dealt with Soviet plots to undermine the American way of life. One example is United Artists' A Bullet for Joey (1955), starring Edward G. Robinson as a police inspector on the trail of a spy who plots to kidnap an important American atomic scientist. George Raft co-stars as the gangster who is hired to carry out the abduction - but balks when he learns what is at stake and helps the G-man keep the world safe for democracy.

Robinson had personal experience with the Red Scare in the early 1950s when columnists and other writers began to imply that he was either a communist or a communist sympathizer. The witch-hunting publication Red Channels listed him as having been connected with 11 alleged communist fronts. To clear his name, Robinson appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee three times beginning in 1950. The HUAC eventually cleared him with this finding: "According to the evidence of this committee, you are a good, loyal and intensely patriotic American citizen." But in paranoia-prone Hollywood, damage had already been done to Robinson's career. With no offers forthcoming, he turned to European films and the Broadway stage. Eventually he was able to rebuild his Hollywood career with such films as Vice Squad (1953), The Violent Men (1955), and A Bullet for Joey.

Excerpt from Turner Classic Movies website located HERE

Posters

Theatrical Release: April 15th, 1955

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DVD Review: MGM - Region 1 - NTSC

DVD Box Cover		CLICK to order from:
Distribution	MGM Home Video - Region 1 - NTSC
Runtime	1:27:00
Video	1.33:1 Aspect Ratio Average Bitrate: 6.33 mb/s NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate:
Audio	English (Dolby Digital mono), DUBs: Spanish (Dolby Digital mono), French (Dolby Digital mono)
Subtitles	English, Spanish, None
Features	Release Information: Studio: MGM Home Video Aspect Ratio: Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Edition Details: • none DVD Release Date: July 10th, 2007 Keep Case Chapters: 20

Comments:

NOTE WhiteSheik says -: "A Bullet For Joey - clearly an open matte transfer - in 1955 this film was projected at 1:85 in the US, as is clearly and obviously evident by the abnormal amount of headroom in every shot, which completely subverts the framing." (Thanks Brian!)

Decent progressive, single-layered, transfer from MGM. Fair contrast and acceptable grey tones and the image is fairly clean. Still some artifacts but its a little better than I was anticipating from the usual lackluster manner that MGM tends to treat vintage films.

No extras at all but there are optional subtitles and a couple of DUBs available. The lack of extras makes the price on the exorbitant side. The film, although certainly not a pure representative of the Noir style - has some of the signature markers. It does have a favorite Noir gal - Audrey Totter. For hardcore 'noirists' only.