The Clouded Yellow

David Somers (Trevor Howard), a British Secret Service agent, is dismissed after a failed mission. He decides to take on an unusual job—cataloging butterflies at the country house of Nicholas and Jess Fenton. Their orphaned niece Sophie (Jean Simmons) lives there; she has suffered from trauma and mental confusion ever since finding her parents dead as a child. When the gamekeeper Hick is murdered on the estate, the evidence points to Sophie—but David, who has fallen in love with her, doesn’t believe she is the culprit. A rarely seen suspense thriller reminiscent of Hitchcock, which stars Jean Simmons and Trevor Howard as an unlikely couple that crosses half the country to get to the port of Liverpool and escape the real killer and the police. In contrast to the scenes at the country estate, dark noir imagery takes over as soon as the action shifts to the city, where shadows conceal the characters in stairwells and alleys, over docks and rooftops, and in the bombed-out ruins.