"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.

****SPOILERS*** Long forgotten-if ever remembered-little film noir that takes place in post war Vienna about this American Toni Sponer, Donald Buka, on the lamb for crimes that's never really explained. It's Toni who borrows his friend Heinth's, Manfred Inger, taxi so he can make a few dollars or marks to pay his expenses since he doesn't have the proper work papers to drive it. As it turns out his first costumer businessman Jack Mortimer is shot dead from behind while in his cab. With a dead man on his hands or in his taxi an no passport or work papers on him Toni takes on the dead mans identity as well as passport and working papers thinking that will get him out of the country and back into the USA.As things turned out for Toni he gets in far more trouble that he could have ever dreamed of. That in that Mortimer was planning to elope with famed pianist's Claude Manelli's ,Francis Lederer, wife Karen, Joan Camden,who at the local police station, in seeing Mortermar's dead body, realized that Toni was impersonating him. Claude who also realized that fact was now determined that Toni leave the country, as the dead Jack Mortimer, to cover up his murder of him. At first playing along with Claude Toni falls in love with his wife Karen which makes Claude go completely bananas and in the end expose himself as the person behind Jack Mortimer's murder! ****SPOILERS*** At first cool as a cucumber Claude realizing that he's in too deep blows his plan to get away with Mortimer's murder when it's discovered in Mortimer's-whom Claude claimed he never knew-suitcase has a photo of Claude together with Karen as well as Mortimer, as the best man, at their wedding! Which has Claude, who's by then a mental case, make a brake for it only to get caught by the police as he tries to get on a plane, that already taken off, to escape capture! As for Toni all is forgiven by the police in what his previous past was, that again is never explained, and given a free pass or plane ride back to the states with his now fiancé Karen at his side.

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.

A quick paced and entertaining noir set in Vienna just after W.W.11. Donald Buka is a refugee who can't find legal work because he does not have any papers. No papers means no work permit, which means no way to get a passport. He survives by driving a friend's cab at night. If he gets caught, it means three months in jail.One night he picks up a fare at a big hotel and drives the man to an airline office. Buka takes the man's luggage in and returns to the car. There, he finds his customer has acquired an unneeded hole in the back of his head. What to do? Call the police? Without a work permit they will put the grab on him real quick. No, he needs time to think this out.He drives to a secluded spot, empties the man's pockets and hides the body. He now has an American passport and plenty of cash! He drops by an underworld contact to have the passport photo changed. Now he just needs to go to the man's hotel and collect the man's plane ticket. His ticket to freedom! Needless to say that would be too simple.Waiting at the hotel, is the dead man's mistress, Joan Camden. Camden is on the run from her rather nasty husband, Francis Lederer, Lederer is of course the swine who had bumped off the man in Buka's cab. Camden calls the police since she believes Buka has robbed her lover. Buka shows his new passport to the Police and manages to talk his way out of the mess.Camden breaks down when hubby Lederer shows up at the police station. Lederer convinces the police Camden has suffered a mental breakdown and she is released to him. She escapes again, finds Buka, and the two decide to flee the country together.Lederer again puts in an appearance and Buka must decide if helping Camden is worth his freedom. This film is much better than I'm making it sound. Buka is best known as the low-life cop killer in 1950's "Between Midnight and Dawn". The film was produced by actor Turhan Bey.