Look to Net this one at your local rental store!

[klondike]

Sometimes, the smaller the video rental store, the more often you can luck into the really rare little gems that are so easy to miss!
I got lucky yesterday - while sauntering semidisgruntledly (there's a Scrabble score for ya!) around the "classics" shelves this title caught my eye: 1951's The Clouded Yellow.
After a quick perusal, home it went with me, and this time, I'd bet right!
Not exactly sure how to describe this one . . oftimes when ambitious little movies seek to straddle genres, or cross types, they end up shooting themselves in both feet, but I geuinely feel this film takes those risks and make them really work.
The feel of the script almost suggests a clandestine meeting of minds between Hitchcock, Fritz Lang & Cornell Woolrich, maybe just overheard sharing drinks while waiting for a train connection . .
Well, however conceived, it's a fun, well-bred jaunt that touches on a score of Brit-Noir hallmarks, while staying mostly out of the shadows, but still keeping up a good balance of adrenaline to goose bumps.
Trevor Howard (in an all-too-seldom lead role) plays a cashiered goverment agent whose reduced to taking a get-by job as a live-in cataloguer of butterflies (hence the title reference) on a remote Victorian estate in the Hampshire countryside . . but all too soon, eccentricity and secret agendas give-way to infidelity, amnesia, gaslighting, jealousy & murder, sparking multiple frame-ups and resulting in Howard going fugitive with the lovely, but darkly neurotic Jean Simmons.
Pursued by police, MI-5 and her obsessive family, helped & betrayed by a rogue's gallery of underworlders, the fleeing lovers almost remind one of Pidgeon & Bennett in Man Hunt, but this time, things just aren't what they seem . .
I highly recommend this one!

[MikeBSG]

I've heard good things about this one. Do you remember who directed it?

[klondike]

VHS rental sleeve says it was directed by "Ralph Thomas", produced by "Betty E. Box", screenplay by "Janet Green".
(No bells ringing here!)

[MissGoddess]

Thanks Klondike, it sounds intriguing. I'll see if Netflix has it.

[jdb1]

The name "Box" rang a bell with me - there's a British producer named Sydney Box, and Betty turns out to be his sister. Here's a link to her bio. Seems she was something of a major player in a small industry:

http://www.britmovie.co.uk/biog/b/008.html

[markfp]

Klondike, you're so right about smaller video stores especially if it's one that never gets rid of a title. I also love searching through public libraries. I was at a library used book sale just before the holidays and they were also selling VHS tapes. I stumbled acrossed "The Clouded Yellow" which I somehow wasn't familiar with. But a British film with Trevor Howard for only fifty cents just had to have my name on it.

I only got around to watching it about a week ago and it's everything you said it is. The tape must have been on the shelf for ten or fifteen years and the quality wasn't as good as I would have liked, with a little jitter now and then, but it's more than watchable and I'm not complaining. It certainly was good enough to make a DVD backup for myself. I would like to see a really good DVD release of it someday.

Mark

[Ollie]

It's a hidden gem for Brit fans, as well, never making it onto DVD except for the occasional broadcasts. Excellent film.