Venetian Bird (1952)

This movie is obviously a competent adaptation of a book. It is pretty good, if you like grade B noir, and we do, but the most fun is seeing familiar faces playing against type and/or putting on Italian accents.The villain in particular was a shocker, as I'd only seen him in light comedies. The most fun was looking up the bios of the actors on IMDb. It is one of those ones where a lot of the actors played roles in WWII themselves, some of them more dramatic than the parts they play here.IMDb requires 10 (!) lines of text, so I will say the pigeons of Venice are amazing, some of the best lines are idiotic in context, and why have a chase scene in a glass factory if you aren't going to break any glass? I guess they didn't have the budget as they filmed in a real glass factory. And, IMDb, "bios" is not a misspelling of BIOS, it is a common term for biography.

Richard Todd plays someone hired by an American millionaire to locate a partisan in Italy who saved his life during the war. He wants to give him a reward.The movie skims much too quickly over Todd's dubious provenance--too bad that would have made the movie so much more interesting than the straight shooter he is molded into.The movie is shot in Venice and as other reviewers have noted resembles both Bond and Hitchcock.... The very last scene with the body falling from onto Saint Mark's square was so Hitchcock like. Also the police chief's office with the vertical window blinds that turn into a map of Venice seemed so Bondish. As some one else noted there are talented people filming this ... moody shadows and cinematography that could not have been easy to do is carried off perfectly.The movie has a couple flaws it becomes too straight shooter and it is talky....we depend on long dialogues by the actors to carry the story... this taxes them to the max especially when the lines are unlikely. Some of the lines were fantastic though ---the one about telling a man nothing causes him to hit a blank wall and return while lying to him sends him down a path and he leaves you alone.RECOMMEND

As another reviewer says this is something of an underrated film. More so since it was made in 1952. At that time exchange controls would have limited the amount of filming that could be done overseas and so much of it was studio filmed in England. The story is intricate and the full meaning is not revealed until the final 20 minutes. If Venice seems harsh and cold its very much in the recovery from war mode yet the back drop is excellently atmospheric. The absence of tourists is refreshing. The films high contrast back and white rendition is also noteworthy.Good cast....Not hard to see why some say Bond meets 3rd man! Even some classy looking femmes fa tales!

Dapper, debonair, Brit Richard Todd runs around Venice (in a nicely tailored suit) trying to detect and derail an evil plot.The best part of this is quite early, when we're not sure if Todd is a hero or a villain. Unfortunately they neutralize any of Todd's threat much too early and jump headlong into fairly disposable conventions (the burden of a female lead arrives). Todd's moral ambiguity ends far too soon, and once he's shown to be a run-of-the-mill straight shooter, things get less interesting.Still it does not look like a B noir. There's more than competent lighting, surprisingly difficult camera moves (carried off smoothly) and a serious mood. Talented people are at work. It's Hitchcockian, almost Welles-ian (George Couloris is in it). How many B Noirs are filmed on location in Venice? For that matter, how many A noirs are? It's shockingly cynical for this era (likewise for Frank Capra's State of the Union '48, and All the Kings Men '49). It has a few smart, bracing lines in it: "When a man faces a blank wall, he turns round and come back. But put him on the wrong path and he'll never come back." "Sometimes changing your habits at the right time is all it takes to save your life"As I watched, I wondered if this was the template for Ian Fleming's Bond? Did 'The International' borrow a ton from this? Both end with a rooftop pursuit. Richard Todd even resembles Clive Owen a bit. Far inferior things were made in the States that are still available (Frank Sinatra in Suddenly! ???) while this remains obscure.