Is it still a parade if it’s in Venice?
Venetian Bird (1952) plays as a slice of life for private detective Edward Mercer. He’s in Venice a few years after World War II, hired to find one Renzo Uccello by a Paris legal firm, but we’re never sure why, even if the ever more implausible story of a reward for a saved life is offered – and it doesn’t seem to matter, as the mystery of Uccello quickly consumes our attention. Mercer advertises for information in Venice, which leads to a quick contact and then, in a ridiculous mistake, the loss of his man as he fetches a drink for him.
But now he has a name, and that leads him to the galleria where Uccello’s unknown wife, Adriana, works on tapestries, and the sad news that Uccello died in a German bombing of a local village. Mercer decides to visit in order to be thorough, and discovers the local sculptor was the mayor at the time of the bombing, and helped remove Uccello’s battered body, among many, from the collapsed hotel. Mercer’s eye is caught by some of the better sculptures, and the former mayor confesses that they are the work of his assistant, a better sculptor than himself, who was taken away by the Germans near the end of the war.
But Mercer nearly gulps down his cigarette: one of the sculptures looks like it is the model for the tapestry he had seen at the galleria where the widow works.
The twists continue as the Chief of Police becomes involved, as do his men, and soon we come to an unexpected denouement: the attempted assassination of an up and coming political leader, which will be pinned on Mercer.
And this is credible because Mercer may have been involved in a similar situation years ago.
This moral ambiguity pervades this story’s major characters, and lends it a realistic edge. Mercer is tired of the whole business of seeing blackness and evil all around him; his friend, Rosa, is a world-weary ex-pat who can never seem to find the right man, but she’ll rouse herself one more time to help Mercer escape the police, despite her own suspicions of his role as assassin; Adriana the widow, offered the opportunity of redemption from her dubious life of crime, turns away in doubt. Hell, even Casana the tourist photographer leads a second life as an undercover policeman.
This realism, in turn, complicates the story, but not overly; that is, the complications are organic and feel right. This makes it an interesting morality tale. It’s not perfect, of course, and not as compelling as other stories of its genre, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), but it kept our attention and kept us wondering, not only what was coming, but what had come before. If this is to your taste, you could do much worse.
