Venetian Bird is a 1952 British thriller film starring Richard Todd, Eva Bartok and John Gregson, and directed by Ralph Thomas.

[3] British private detective Edward Mercer (Richard Todd) is employed to travel to Venice and locate an Italian who is to be rewarded for his assistance to an Allied airman during the Second World War.

Central to it is whether Renzo Uccello (John Gregson) actually died a few years earlier in World War II or not.

Michael Balcon initially rejected the idea of a film based on Canning's novel because it was set in Italy and dealt with Italians, not Britons.

Italian censors required that the script clarify the political struggles in post-war Venice that were portrayed in the novel.