blanche-2 "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.

secondtake 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.

krdement Previous commentators have noted the similarity in appearance between this film and The Third Man, director Carol Reed's classic film noir starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. This similarity strikes the viewer almost immediately. It is, indeed, high praise to be compared to Robert Krasker's academy award- winning cinematography in The Third Man. The plot of Stolen Identity also has been delineated fairly accurately but in rather ordinary terms. I found it highly creative and entertaining. As common as the "Mistaken - or Stolen - Identity" device is in both theater and cinema, it is only a device and not to be mistaken for the plot, itself. Consequently, while the viewer may have seen this device "a thousand" times, the plot of Stolen Identity is full of surprises and twists based upon this device. It is the unexpected turns that make this film much fresher, more original and engrossing than a plot synopsis might convey. Stolen Identity doesn't rely on the kind of suspense that characterizes most film noire, because there is no real mystery here. Instead, it relies on constant, smaller surprises. In short, the Mistaken Identity device is rather common; but this plot is not.Finally, although I was not familiar with the cast, I found the acting to be uniformly good, occasionally outstanding. I easily could have imagined other actors turning this film into a melodrama, with bombast, overblown gestures and obvious facial expressions. The acting is always more restrained and subtle. Donald Buka is especially restrained and credible, never "blowing his cover" with an obvious facial expression as we see too often in films that depend on the maintenance of subterfuge to sustain dramatic tension.The only disappointment in this otherwise fine film was the very weak development of the love story sub-plot. As it stands, it seems like an afterthought - a mild surprise, in fact - tacked on to the end. Or perhaps during their shared ordeal, the actors simply couldn't convey a palpable level of chemistry that I could appreciate. This sub-plot should have been made more apparent as the story unfolded. All in all, I thought this film was a fine little gem, and I wondered why I had not seen it before. Try it, you'll like it.

David (Handlinghandel) For one thing, he produced this movie. It has the feel of later movies with international casts that are dubbed. The opening credits tell us it was filmed in Vienna.Bey was a delight in the Universal adventure movies of the 1940s. He was also superb in a movie I saw maybe ten years ago but have never heard of since: "The Amazing Mr. X." Maybe it was Dr. X. I remember it as a thrilling and frightening movie.This one is pretty wooden, unfortunately. The plot isn't easy to follow. When I got the hang of it, I was disappointed anyway.Francis Lederer looks great as a concert pianist. He was a very handsome leading man ten or 15 years earlier. He never really caught on as a major star, though he should have.This isn't terrible but it's pretty heavy going.