Stolen Identity

There's a "Third Man" look to the shadowy B&W photography of STOLEN IDENTITY, a thriller produced by Turhan Bey, ex-star of Universal pictures during the '40s. It's an expertly filmed tale of jealousy that leads to murder when a famous pianist (FRANCIS LEDERER) becomes overly possessive of his wife (JOAN CAMDEN) and is soon intent on carrying out a scheme to murder a man she's having an affair with.

A taxi-driver (DONALD BUKA) happens to be giving the woman's lover a lift to the hotel when he steps outside a moment to chat with a worker digging up the street. Lederer uses the sound of the drill to muffle the sound of the bullet he puts in the head of the passenger from outside the back of the car. When Buka returns to his cab, he finds a dead man in the passenger seat.

Enroute to report the murder to the police, he changes his mind and decides to switch identities with the dead man who has an American passport which means Buka could realize his ambition to return to the United States. The stolen identity plot becomes thicker when the man's girlfriend (Lederer's wife) shows up at the hotel to accuse Buka of impersonating the dead man.

It's the sort of plot movie-goers have probably seen countless times, but it gets a nice workout here, with plenty of tense scenes as Buka and Lederer's wife plan how to run from the authorities until a final confrontation with the murderer and the police.

It's extremely absorbing, well done and holds the interest throughout with some excellent atmospheric photography of Vienna that will remind most movie-goers of "The Third Man".

Well worth viewing.

"Stolen Identity" was produced by none other than Turhan Bey and filmed in Vienna, his home town. It's loaded with dark atmosphere. The movie stars Francis Lederer, Donald Buka, and Joan Camden. Lederer is Claude Manelli, a well-known concert pianist who is married to Karen. She's miserable. She says she married him after knowing him one week and was happy - for one week.

She has planned to leave the country with one Mr. Mortimer. She is to meet him at his hotel.

Buka plays Toni Sponer, a man without a passport or a taxi license, who illegally drives a cab. He picks up Mortimer, but when he speaks to him and gets no answer, he realizes the man is dead and bloody. He tries to report the crime, but it's New Year's Eve and there is a lot going on. It finally occurs to him to take the man's identity and get rid of the body. Which he does.

When Karen sees that he's not Mortimer, she gets the police. But her husband convinces the police that she's delusional, and Buka is released. But is he? And what is really going on?

Very neat noir, well done and well acted by Lederer, one of my favorites, and Buka, a big Broadway actor whom I've seen in many roles but not in leads.

Post-war Vienna still looks like pretty much of a mess - I remember being told the roof of St. Stephen's church "burned up like paper" during the war. Still, it was great to see it.

Turhan Bey, who lived to be 90, was an actor turned photographer, producer. and back to actor again. I once needed to speak to a casting person who was on the phone - he put his hand over the receiver and said, "It's Turhan Bey. We're talking about Tyrone."

After the leading men returned from WW II, Bey knew his time was up and left Hollywood. returning to Vienna circa 1953, only to start a second acting career in 1993 in Hollywood. Interesting man.

I thought this was a good film and fun to watch.

There's quite a lot going on in this complex thriller. Fairly quickly we realise that "Karen" (Joan Camden) is unhappily married to concert pianist "Claude" (Francis Lederer). Unfortunately, her maid isn't very trustworthy and so a note suggesting a rendezvous with a recently arrived American visitor ends up with her husband, who has no intention of letting her meet him. Amidst all these domestic machinations, local cabbie "Sponer" (Donald Luka) is dreaming of a emigrating to the USA. At this point, serendipity takes rather a menacing hand in the proceedings with "Buka" finding himself in possession of a corpse, an American passport and a plane ticket. Perhaps this is his chance to escape his drudgery? Before he can make too many plans however, "Karen" shows up at his (borrowed) hotel room expecting her friend, realises he's a fraud and with her husband using the police and virtually any means to keep her close we find quite a tight game of cat and mouse - and just a hint of romance - develops. It's quite a tightly delivered story with a decent amount of intrigue even though I felt the denouement felt a little rushed and flat. There isn't a star as such, a collection of competent B-listers do well enough with the script to keep this moving along for eighty minutes of Hogmanay celebrations that have just enough of a sense of mystery to be worth watching.

Stolen Identity (1953)

You want to like this movie for a lot of reasons, one of them being the filming location, actual Austria (Vienna), which is announced at the opening credits. Most of it is at night over wet streets, with modernist architecture and signage mixing with that sense of Old Europe that can be enchanting. It also has an actress I really fell for in "The Captive City," filmed the year before, Joan Camden. It's about murder and fugitives from the law and a confusion about who is who (as the title suggests).

But it stumbles along, a compromise of many intentions. When it plays as a straight up suspense movie, we are captive, and impressed. But the actual events get muddled a little, the editing seems a bit off (running from abrupt to lingering on a scene too long). And Camden, in her role as the young wife of a concert pianist, hardly appears at all. On top of all this is large cast of secondary characters who are range from a hair awkward to a bit caricatured, all of them speaking in slightly compromised English (some Austrian German and subtitles would have been great, but not acceptable at the time).

Director Gunther von Fritsch isn't known in particular for any great accomplishments--he was Austrian, and helped pull together what is an Austrian production in most respects (officially the Austrian Transglobe-Film), but it is infused with American talent and is all in English. von Fritsch was involved as co-director on two interesting (American) films, "This is Cinerama" and "Curse of the Cat People."

All that said, the movie is different than the usual film noirs with the same visual feel. The hero is a bit of an ordinary chap, an American (played by Donald Buka) without papers in a foreign city brimming with assorted characters. And he gets a lucky break in his trying to get out of Vienna, but it's loaded with danger and utter mystery.

Camden, when she appears further in the movie, is at first a disappointment, having to take on a role that isn't naturally her own until later, when she is more genuine. Hang in there! The pianist is a rugged masculine type, Czech-Hungarian actor Francis Lederer, and he holds up the music scenes as much as the music itself. And it's all filmed nicely. So in all, you don't mind watching even if you wonder where the thrust of the plot goes at times.

Expect a fast cascade of interesting scenes, and situations that are really quite tense and dramatic. Many of the scenes are terrific in their use of light, deep shadows, and general photography. But don't expect it to fall together with the verve and elegance it could have had. And it almost became a romance, which would have lifted it considerably.

Its a good film set in Vienna about a cab driver, Toni (Donald Buka), who steals a passenger's identity when the passenger is shot whilst sitting in the back of his cab. This gives him an identity as he is an illegal immigrant, but he needs to play out the role of the victim until he catches a flight to the U.S. with a ticket in the victim's name. Mrs Manelli (Joan Camden) rumbles him but she is accused of having mental problems by her husband, Claude (Francis Lederer), a concert pianist. As a result, Toni is let off the hook. Claude does not want to part from his wife, but she runs away from him. There are several plot twists and eventually both Toni and Mrs Manelli make a run for it together - they are both trying to escape from their lives in Vienna. There is a tense, exciting build-up to the finale. Are they going to get away.....??...

Unfortunately, the picture quality isn't fantastic and there is a line that runs down the middle of the picture for a while. The cast are all very good in their roles, especially Francis Lederer's portrayal of Claude. Also important to the story are Heinth (Manfred Inger) as the cab company owner, Marie (Inge Konradi) as Toni's hometown girlfriend and the inspector (Hermann Erhardt).

Its a good film.