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"Abenteuer in Wien" from 1952 should be regarded as one of the best film noirs produced in Europe and could compete with the best film noirs from the US. There is also an American version of this film with just a few actors changed under the name of "Stolen identity" where the soundtrack is in English. "Abenteuer in Wien" is a very difficult film to get hold of. The Austrian Film Archive issued some years ago a DVD which is of very good quality but I doubt that it is much known outside Austria/Germany. There are elements of the film which reminds of Hitchcock but in my mind this film is superior to many Hitchcock's films, as this film has also a poetic quality seldom found in Hitchcock's films . This film is both entertaining, funny, dramatic and have a fantastic atmospheric beautiful photography capturing Vienna five years after the war. Anybody enthusiastic about "Third Man" and its Vienna locations should not miss this film. The action take place during 12 hours during New Year's Eve in Vienna. The plot is very ingenious and all bits of the puzzle come nicely together. All actors are outstanding. There is no overt violence and the only shot fired is not even heard due to pneumatic drills in the reconstruction of the city after the bombings. There are fantastic scenes of New Year's Eve celebrations mingled with a chase in the labyrinth parts of Vienna which spins out to the bombed parts of the city. There is a very original touch of the movie like the murderer planning his deed while rehearsing Schuman's piano concerto in Musik Verein. In contrast the humble surroundings of the unfortunate taxi driver working without identity papers in the war torn city. By pure chance he gets involved in this murder plot. There are remarkably actors even in minor parts lasting just a few minutes which give a special colour and feeling of the film . The drunken New Year's Reveller with the balloon is a revelation lasting only a minute. These were hard times in Vienna with much of the population living of tips and bribes .There are fine vignettes of bureaucracy reminding of the old Empire I have not seen the American version of the film which seems to have only the main actors slightly changed but I doubt that the original can be surpassed. It seems almost sacrilegious that Viennese population should speak English instead of Viennese German, which is part of this picture's great charm. The director Emil Reinert died only a year after the film but his master piece deserves to be much more well known.

This Swedish film was directed by Molander towards the end of a career which had started in 1910 as a script writer for films by the famous directors of the silent era Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller. He eventually began directing himself and had a career that spanned almost five decades. Internationally, he is most famous for "Intermezzo" (1936) and as the director who discovered Ingrid Bergman. This film "Enhörningen" ("The Unicorn") has been forgotten, for which there is an easy explanation, namely Ingmar Bergman. During the 1950s Bergman's films began to conquer the world and naturally crowded out other films, especially those by older directors such as Molander. Retrospectively, Bergman's best films were done in the 1950s and this film was supposed to be dated by comparison. However, Ingmar Bergman cooperated with Molander, and had a very high opinion of his filmmaking and great respect for him. In fact, there is a strong influence of Molander in the earlier Bergman films and anybody seeing this film would certainly agree. Molander was considered an accomplished craftsman with an excellent film technique. This is evident in the beautiful black and white photography in this film. The oppressive feeling in the hospital scenes and, in particular, the interesting mass bird scene outside the hospital are a bit reminiscent of Hitchcock. There are always interesting camera views, beautiful use of shadows and striking deployment of a moving camera, e.g. in the very odd short nightclub scene in Paris. So why has this film been forgotten? Apart from competing with superior films from Bergman's best period from the 1950s, perhaps this high-strung melodrama and the very theatrical acting would put some people off. One might complain that the ages of the actors are not appropriate for their roles. Inga Tidblad (aged 55 at the time) plays the main character, including her younger self when recalling the main events of her life, and so we see her in the role of a 20 year-old woman alongside a younger actress (Isa Quensel) playing her mother. Nevertheless, this film features some of Sweden's most famous stage actors. Inga Tidblad was a contemporary of Greta Garbo at theatre school but, unlike her, chose to stay in Sweden and had a distinguished and long career, mainly in the theatre. She was acclaimed in plays by Shakespeare and Strindberg, and was also the first Mrs Tyrone in the world premiere of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night", which took place in Stockholm. Another doyen of Swedish theatre, Edwin Adolphson, plays the lady-killer in "The Unicorn". His position in Swedish theatre and film was not unlike that of Laurence Olivier in Britain, and I would say that there is also some physical resemblance. As an interesting casting decision, which rarely occurs in films, he appears alongside his own daughter, Kristina Adolphson (aged 18), who plays the daughter of the lady-killer. Edvin Adolphson had a 60-year career and, as a curiosity, one of his earlier wives was Harriet Bosse, the veteran actress once married to the playwright August Strindberg. It is rather astonishing that the music composed for the film by the renowned composer Lars Erik Larsson is not mentioned in the credits. The music is very suggestive but used carefully and sparsely throughout the film, indeed only in the most dramatic moments. The whole production is well crafted.