Audrey Totter

  • Tension (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Now here’s an intriguing film noir, even if it’s completely ludicrous at times. After an ominous voice-over opens from the film’s detective character (“The only way to solve a case is to apply tension until someone snaps”), Tension features a mild-mannered bespectacled man (Richard Basehart) who, upon being left by an ungrateful wife, creates a second glasses-less identity in preparation for a nefarious goal and is eventually involved in the murder of his wife’s new boyfriend. There are many complications, including a good girl played by Cyd Charisse in one of her most sympathetic turns of her pre-stardom 1940s. Meanwhile, Audrey Totter plays the deliciously quasi-caricatural evil wife with some devilish relish. Still, Tension is a pretty straightforward film noir with a lead character turning to the dark side and not being sure of getting away from it. Not all of the pieces of the film work together: the opening voice-over suggests something harder than what follows, and the transformation of our protagonist into some other personality (complete with a new apartment!) stretches a great deal of credibility. Still, there’s a pleasant atmosphere coming from Tension that makes it worth a look, especially if you’re looking for some sunny California Noir that straddles the line between 1940s formalism and slight ludicrousness.

  • A Bullet for Joey (1955)

    A Bullet for Joey (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) You would think that the single biggest reaction to a film titled A Bullet for Joey would be “Who is Joey and why does he deserve a bullet?”, but after watching the film, the first thing that comes to mind is “Wow… Edward G. Robinson as a French-Canadian policeman?”  A cold war thriller chiefly concerned with communists kidnapping a nuclear physicist, it brings Robinson as “RCMP Inspector Raoul Leduc” (A French-Canadian name is there’s one, despite Robinson making no effort at playing French Canadian) tracking down the miscreants and saving the west from a crucial brain drain. As a Canadian, the film is probably far more interesting than to American viewers, especially as it’s largely set in Montréal without actually showing anything distinct about Montréal — it might as well be any other Midwestern American city so little does it take advantage of what makes Montréal such a unique place. But if you keep to the script’s guns-and-girls portion, the film becomes an average genre entry, a bit dull on the sides and not really worth any sustained attention. Robinson plays opposite George Raft as a criminal manipulated into helping the communists, and the much more interesting Audrey Totter as a better-written love interest. There are a few shocks along the way (the best, or worst, being what happens to a shy sweet secretary who becomes a pawn in the larger game), but otherwise A Bullet for Joey is a routine film with noirish overtones and some occasionally decent dialogue. Canadian fans will get more out of pointing and chuckling at the film’s “Hollywood, Canada” setting.