The first movie from Ralph Thomas and Betty Box, a team that would become one of the giants of British cinema in the 50s and 60s, and to a lesser extent 70s. It's an odd sort of Hitchcockian thriller, with Jean Simmons as a fragile heroine accused of murder. Trevor Howard is a pipe smoking dude who in the opening sequence is booted out of the secret service for incompetence; he struggles to find another job (he's a former journo - Kenneth More appears as his friend) so is forced to take a gig cataloguing butterflies.
Howard had played dashing military hero to a much younger female co star in I See a Dark Stranger; here the age gap is even larger. He could be Simmons' father - which isn't a lot of fun because he's been around the block and she's very child like, with mental problems. (Like Audrey Hepburn, Simmons spent a lot of the 1950s acting against much older male co stars.) It's accentuated in that Howard is so fatherly and protective.
Drama wise I think the film suffers from the fact we're never sure until the end if Simmons did it or not - a mistake Hitchcock never made about his men on the run or spunky heroines (eg Young and Innocent, Rebecca, The Lady Vanishes). Also no one deadly is after Simmons and Howard - sure the British authorities are, but there's no life and death threat, they're quite kindly (as represented by Kenneth More) - only at the end when the real killer comes in do stakes raise. It also lacks humour an romance.
There are compensations - the acting is professional, there is some location work, the action always moves, I enjoyed the climax on a tower.
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