It's more than possible than David Cornwell saw this film and kept the idea of a British secret agent getting fired and then taking a dead-end job in mind when he came to write The Spy Who Came In From The Cold a good decade later. Naturally it's not quite straightforward plagiarism, for one thing Trevor Howard really is fired whereas Richard Burton was only pretending; against that both ex-spies take similar jobs, Howard in a private house and Burton in a left-wing private library. That's still not as referential as the Clouded Yellow gets because next comes the one about Sonia Dresdel trying to send Jean Simmons mad - straight out of Gaslight and, for good measure, we get a touch of the 39 Steps as Howard and Simmons take it on the Jesse Owens with the Lake District standing in for Scotland. None of this would matter if there was even a spark of chemistry between Howard and Simmons, alas, a romance between Stalin and Mother Teresa would be more convincing. On the other hand nostalgia buffs will have a field day spotting the likes of Richard Pearson, Sam Kydd, Richard Wattis, Dandy Nichols, Geoffrey Keen and more all fretting and strutting their hour upon the stage. Poor Butterfly indeed.
Review of The Clouded Yellow
