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Wednesday, October 21, 2020

VENETIAN BIRD (aka THE ASSASSIN) (1952)

With visions of THIRD MAN/'49 box-office dancing in its head, this derivative thriller ships Richard Todd’s private investigator off to Venice in search of a missing man who's soon reported dead.  But following the usual leads (work, girlfriend, relatives, police), Todd thinks otherwise and keeps to the hunt, hitting many scenic Grand Canal sites along the way while uncovering a secret cabal inside a palazzo of art restorers who are really busy plotting a political assassination during a canal regatta.  Yikes!  And that would include the woman he’s falling in love with, ‘widow’ to that missing dead man who's not only alive & well, but triggerman for the plot.  Director Ralph Thomas does a neat job moving in & around slippery Venetian corners, steeply cantered tile rooftops & narrow waterways of the city, less so with the vague Italian accents of his largely London-based supporting actors or in parsing some of the confusing plot turns.  (Victor Canning adapting his own novel.*)   Some awfully good suspense set pieces though: a trip to a Murano glass factory; priestly interruption; Venetian rooftop chase finale.  With a very nice supporting turn from George Coulouris as an overly trusting police chief.  Fun.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Author Victor Canning’s THE RAINBIRD PATTERN, which also uses a swapped identity name change, was the source for Alfred Hitchcock’s much underrated last film FAMILY PLOT.  OR: Check out THE THIRD MAN cast parallels: Todd, Coulouris, Eva Bartok, John Gregson in for Joseph Cotten, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli, Orson Welles.

CONTEST: Speaking of Welles, this film’s final chase much like Welles not in THE THIRD MAN, but from a different Welles thriller.  Name it to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of the streaming film of your choice!

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