The Clouded Yellow (1951)

THE CLOUDED YELLOW is nothing more than a re-staging of Hitch's THE 39 STEPS, although not without merit for this thriller genre of film-making. What I particularly liked about it is how deceptive it starts off: former secret agent Trevor Howard gets a job cataloguing butterflies for some eccentric old country bumpkin, before falling in love with the man's fragile niece (the ubiquitous Jean Simmons) and getting involved in a murder plot.The plot then becomes a chase narrative that takes in numerous locations around the UK: Newcastle, the Lake District, Liverpool, to name but three. I can't remember other British thrillers featuring so many different locations so this must have had a bigger budget than usual for the genre. The story is familiar but things don't get too convoluted, and the suspense remains strong from halfway through until the very end, which is highly satisfying.The cast is full of familiar faces with Andre Morell as the typically gruff secret service chief and Kenneth More as the likable agent giving chase. There are cameos for the ever-present likes of Richard Wattis and Sam Kydd, Geoffrey Keen plays a cop, and Maxwell Reed (Mr Joan Collins) a suave and sinister type. Howard and Simmons aren't my favourite of stars but they acquit themselves well with the material here and THE CLOUDED YELLOW as a whole is a watchable British thriller.

I like the idea of David Somers being fired from his job and forced to register with an employment agency to secure a new job cataloguing butterflies. It shows how a career person can fall from grace and end up following the agency route. What makes this stand out is that even though Somers has friends he can speak to about his unemployment, even his friend, Kenneth More, is spying on him and reporting back to HQ. It shows that you can't trust anyone because whoever you speak to will either block your pathway, or speak to people who can block your pathway. The fact that Somers ends up in a dull job is just a macguffin because it puts him in contact with Jean Simmons whom he goes on the run with because she is accused of a murder.

If it weren't for good old Trevor Howard, this film would not be nearly so interesting. He is always enjoyable to watch, as he is always convincing and we want to see what he will get up to. Here he is thrown out of MI-6, the foreign secret service, rather unceremoniously after years of brilliant service in the field, and has to find some work. He ends up taking a temporary job cataloguing butterflies, of which the Clouded Yellow is a particularly pretty one which comes across the English Channel in a good summer and flutters around as delightfully as Jean Simmons. And yes, she is living in the rambling country house where the butterfly collection is. She is the psychologically disturbed and mysteriously orphaned niece of a rather creepy aunt and uncle. Or at least they say, rather too often, that Jean is psychologically disturbed. But is she really? Did she witness as a very young child what really happened to her parents? They say she 'found them'. But did she see who killed them? Clearly there is some vintage mystery material here. Jean Simmons at this stage in her career had very bushy eyebrows and looked more like a trapped wild animal than a girl. Alas, she did not have the magically convincing wildness of Jennifer Jones in GONE TO EARTH (1950, see my review), or this film could have become something of a classic. The direction by Ralph Thomas is also rather uninspired and pedestrian. So this film never really rises to the level of a butterfly's flight. Come to that, the story is pretty contrived and corny. The film is a tasty amuse-bouche, but should never be confused with a main course.

CLOUDED YELLOW is a favourite from my schooldays because of its basic ingredients - a haunting mystery, a fascinating chase across England from a deceptively-drowsy Hampshire to the bustle of Liverpool docks, a rousing climax and the only on-screen teaming of two great British stars. Hitchcock was the obvious model, a factor utilised in the marketing of the recent DVD and the director Ralph Thomas actually remade THE 39 STEPS - very flatly - at the end of the decade. Thomas was a prolific journeyman of variable competence, turning out thrillers, war films, adventure stories, historical dramas and comedies (most notably DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE) but lacked the personality to conjure a classic.David Somers (Trevor Howard) is an M.I.6 agent - a sort of low-key James Bond without the glamour - who's put on the back-burner after botching an operation. He opts for a job cataloguing butterflies (hence the title) at a rural retreat where he involves himself in the troubles of Sophie (Jean Simmons) the young ward of the house who's suspected of murder when the local bad-lad (Maxwell Reed), with whom she'd been quarrelling, is found with a knife in his back. Somers takes it upon himself to extricate this trapped butterfly from police hostility (very Hitch) and smuggle her out of the country with the help of his contacts. Despite the presence of Kenneth More on the sidelines (waiting for the big break so soon to come) there's no (conscious) humour in the film at all and no Hitch-tension between the leads. Though motivated by a romantic attachment as well as the urge to atone for past mistakes Somers seems more a father-figure than a potential lover. No teasy-weasy handcuffs and wet stockings here, it's all very stiff upper-lip and he never questions her innocence though the girl remains an enigma until near the end. As a child she'd witnessed the violent death of her parents but has blocked out the memory (very SPELLBOUND). When she starts to get it back the real perpetrator of crimes past and present turns up in Liverpool to silence her. What follows is like watching MIDSOMER MURDERS turn into THE PERILS OF PAULINE complete with cliff-hanger. Wildly over-the-top and completely illogical it's great hare-brained fun and very gripping. Whether this startling gear-change was originally planned or came about during production is unclear. The film certainly terminates very abruptly with the pair in long-shot walking away together over the rooftops, arms around each other, though the gentleman at this moment looks about a foot taller than Mr. Howard. Hitchcockery is catching. In the changed ending to SUSPICION we're given a back-of-heads shot of Grant and Fontaine where the heads quite obviously aren't theirs.Ralph Thomas does bring off one nifty Hitch trick quite well. Somers appears to capitulate to pursuing cops and sends them into a restaurant to pick the girl up. When they reach her table she's no longer there and a brassy blonde greets them instead while Somers too has cleared off. Nice one. Hitch would smile.