... which quite frankly would be a mediocre five star film if not for Trevor Howard and Jean Simmons.
Major David Somers (Howard) is fired from his job of secret agent, and since you can't put secret agent on your resume you'd think he'd have a hard time getting a job because of the gap in said resume. But he finds something just perfect for him. It's a job on a country estate cataloging butterflies in a collection. He wanted something quiet, away from the rough and tumble of city life - oh boy was he ever wrong.
The man of the house is a middle aged milquetoast, and his wife is trying to fight off middle age with an affair with a laborer on the estate who is a hideous human being half her age. He better enjoy his youth because his muscles are all he has going for himself. The Fentons have a niece, Sophie (Simmons), who "gets muddled" because she found her parents' murdered bodies as a childand she has been troubled ever since. And for some reason her aunt is trying to gaslight her. And then one night the laborer is found murdered and all evidence points to Sophie.
Now Somers has been an onlooker in all of this except for one big thing -he has fallen in love with Sophie. This is hard to swallow. Sophie is half Somers' age, looks it, plus she has been isolated on her aunt and uncle's estate since childhood, so what could she know of love? Somers, allegedly a man of the world, never stops to think about this or the fact that maybe Sophie DID kill the laborer when he sneaks out of the house with her in the middle of the night and they decide to make a run for another country.
So most of the film is the chase, Somers and his formerly discredited powers of allusion against the police trying to find them. This would get boring if it wasn't for the fact that Howard, as Somers, seems to be having such a good time winning his good name back by sidestepping every police barricade and trap, and Simmons as the enigmatic Sophie, seems more and more like somebody who could have done the crime after all.
I'd mildly recommend it.
Major David Somers (Howard) is fired from his job of secret agent, and since you can't put secret agent on your resume you'd think he'd have a hard time getting a job because of the gap in said resume. But he finds something just perfect for him. It's a job on a country estate cataloging butterflies in a collection. He wanted something quiet, away from the rough and tumble of city life - oh boy was he ever wrong.
The man of the house is a middle aged milquetoast, and his wife is trying to fight off middle age with an affair with a laborer on the estate who is a hideous human being half her age. He better enjoy his youth because his muscles are all he has going for himself. The Fentons have a niece, Sophie (Simmons), who "gets muddled" because she found her parents' murdered bodies as a childand she has been troubled ever since. And for some reason her aunt is trying to gaslight her. And then one night the laborer is found murdered and all evidence points to Sophie.
Now Somers has been an onlooker in all of this except for one big thing -he has fallen in love with Sophie. This is hard to swallow. Sophie is half Somers' age, looks it, plus she has been isolated on her aunt and uncle's estate since childhood, so what could she know of love? Somers, allegedly a man of the world, never stops to think about this or the fact that maybe Sophie DID kill the laborer when he sneaks out of the house with her in the middle of the night and they decide to make a run for another country.
So most of the film is the chase, Somers and his formerly discredited powers of allusion against the police trying to find them. This would get boring if it wasn't for the fact that Howard, as Somers, seems to be having such a good time winning his good name back by sidestepping every police barricade and trap, and Simmons as the enigmatic Sophie, seems more and more like somebody who could have done the crime after all.
I'd mildly recommend it.