THE ASSASSIN (1952—aka VENETIAN BIRD)

Edward Mercer (Richard Todd, pictured), who works for an American relief society, arrives in Venice on an assignment: track down Renzo Uccello, an Italian resistance fighter who saved the life of an Allied soldier in WWII, and give him a reward from the soldier's family. He has placed an ad in a newspaper asking for information on Uccello, and he gets one reply from a man named Carlo. They meet at a church but two thugs arrive and attack Carlo. Mercer takes him to his hotel room but eventually Carlo ducks out through the window, seemingly no longer willing to share what he knows. Mercer finds out that Carlo has a job at at an art gallery in a old mansion run by Count Boria (Walter Rilla) but is stonewalled there, though he does make contact with Adriana (Eva Bartok), Uccello's former girlfriend, who says that Uccello died at the end of the war. Circumstances lead Mercer to believe that Uccello planted his identity papers on a dead body in order to disappear, and he keeps looking for Uccello, to the dismay of almost everyone around him, including the local police chief (George Coulouris). Almost the only person on his side is Rosa, an old acquaintance from the war days. Meanwhile, the big news in town is a visit from a controversial political figure named Nerva, and when Mercer overhears a conversation between Boria and another man implying that they are conspiring to assassinate Nerva, Mercer suspects this may have some tie to Uccello, and he's right. 

This is a decent thriller which could be made leaner and better paced with the excision of a couple of characters. Todd is excellent as the man in over his head who is always just a beat or two behind the bad guys, and it's not always easy to tell who's a good guy and who's a bad guy. It's also not clear why Mercer stays on in Venice after he hears that Uccello is dead, except there wouldn't be much of a movie if he did leave. Rilla, Bartok and Coulouris are all very good, as are John Gregson as a cop and Margot Grahame as Rosa. But it's the Venice location shooting that is the real star of the movie. I don't like to use the old saying that the location is like a character, but here it's close to being true. The gallery in particular is nicely atmospheric. I suspect that most of the interiors were shot on sets in England, but they are integrated nicely with the Venice footage. The American title (The Assassin) is bland but it fits the story; the original British title, Venetian Bird, is more colorful and refers to a restored painting that provides a clue for Mercer, but it's really no more descriptive of the narrative. Many viewers compare this to the famous Carol Reed thriller The Third Man, and some even prefer this, as I do—I always get bogged down in the draggy plot and the irritating soundtrack of the Reed film. The tension slackens a bit in the last third, but a climactic rooftop chase ends things well. On DVD in the British Noir boxed set, which means that it's not really noir, though the general feeling is close to genuine noir. [DVD]