Rapt à Venise

Left alone in Venice to await the arrival of his estranged father, a young boy has trouble convincing the hotel staff that something is up when his father never arrives in this little seen thriller based on a Graham Greene story. The premise is promising enough and despite some intrusive (if poetic) voice-over narration, the film begins well. Richard O'Sullivan makes an appealing young protagonist and his frustration is heartfelt as he takes to wandering the streets alone when everyone rejects his claims that his father might have been murdered. The film loses this edge along the way though as O'Sullivan befriends a hotel secretary and her boyfriend, played by Alida Valli and Richard Basehart. Both are quite appealing characters, but they are nowhere near as interesting as the confused young boy, and as the film deflects to focus on Valli and Baseheart solving the mystery without O'Sullivan accompanying them, the film loses all oomph. What makes the film so intriguing to begin with is, after all, the boy's helplessness. There is admittedly some interesting in how he begins to cling to Valli and Basehart like surrogate parents of sorts, but given how the film constantly shies over the whereabouts of his actual mother (who we are told has virtually abandoned him), this angle never really takes off. When push comes to shove, it is easy to see why 'The Stranger's Hand' has fallen into obscurity over the years. It is not a film without merits, but neither it is quite the satisfying Greene adaptation that Carol Reed's 'The Fallen Idol' and 'The Third Man' turned out to be.

All of Mario Soldati's films are of great interest for the craftsmanship of the director and his intimate if not professional sense of literature, and this film is no exception, as it is made on a short story by Graham Greene. A boy (Richard O'Sullivan) is sent to Venice to meet his father for the first time in three years, who is coming down to Venice from Trieste, a diplomat involved in refugee cases, but he never arrives to meet his son. Naturally the boy gets worried and mobilizes all kinds of possible helpers, where the chiefest one appears to be Alida Valli because of her boyfriend Joe (Richard Baseheart) who turns out to be the catcher in the rye. The father, who has been kidnapped for political reasons, is played by Trevor Howard, and he is miserable indeed as a drugged patient in a phoney doctor's fun house of so called patients with no possibility to reach his son. The mood of the film is very grey, although it is all in the splendid queen of beautiful cities Venice, but not much of its glory is shown here, but the film is closer to "Don't Look Now" some decades later with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland getting just as deep into trouble as Trevor Howard does here - it's the same kind of back side Venice with narrow stinking canals and dirty business going on. It is not on par with "The Third Man" and "The Man Between" of similar stories of destiny, but this film is actually more serious because of the boy in the lead - the main film is all about his concerns, which you can't help empathize with. To this comes a very gripping score by Nino Rota, and afterwards you must wonder about the character of the doctor - was he really as bad as all that, or was there possibly some reasonable good in him as well? That character (Eduardo Ciannelli) is the enigma of the tale and because of that the most interesting character, a most typical Graham Greene character.

A young boy arrives in Venice (Italy, not California) to find his father. After a phone call with him at his arrival, the father disappears. The kid is helped by Allida Valli and Richard Basehart (who appears suddenly without any explanation). This thriller with a desperate young boy (touching Richard O'Sullivan) is slow-paced until a fast energic ending. The scenes with the father as a sick prisonner are creepy. There are a lot of views of Venice with lot of crowd, on the contrary of "the Venetian bird" directed the year before in a deserted Venice (also talkie movie with a fast energic ending). Not the best movie directed by Mario Soldati.

I almost gave up on this film as the TV version had very muddy sound, and I found it hard to follow at the start. I'm glad I didn't give up, as it turned out to be quite the clever little pot-boiler. I must admit to being a Graham Greene fan, and a Richard O'Sullivan fan as well. Firstly, the film: I found it a surprisingly good early fifties film, with adult themes well ahead of its time and very pleasing cinematography. I couldn't help thinking that Hitchcock himself would have had a hard time doing better with the suspense and the black and white visions of Venice. Sometimes corny and plot challenged, it remains a rather intelligent piece of post war European intrigue. Despite his young age (10) I believe that Richard O'Sullivan should have received top billing because, despite other comments on this site to the contrary, he both Starred in, and carried this film - quite a feat for one so young.