The Secret Fury

The Secret Fury is a 1950 American blackandwhite psychological thriller film noir directed by Mel Ferrer, featuring Claudette Colbert, Robert Ryan and Jane Cowl.

With the help of a lawyer and the district attorney, the couple tracks down and questions the justice of the peace that signed her wedding papers. Even he recognizes her as the woman he married. Frustrated, the couple next visits the man to whom Ellen is accused of being married. In a back room a gunshot fires and Ellen is accused of killing the man. She breaks down after a lengthy trial, is eventually found not guilty due to insanity, and is sent to a mental institution. Meanwhile her fiance David, still believing her innocence, begins to find clues that may help free her.When released, critic Bosley Crowther lambasted the film, especially the screenplay, writing, Things must be tough in the picture business when such a respectable cast as is in The Secret Fury, now on the Paramounts screen, descends to such cheap and lurid twaddle as this R. K. O. melodrama is, Claudette Colbert, Robert Ryan, Paul Kelly, Philip Ober, Jane Cowl and even Jos Ferrer in a bitADD role are the major performers who expend more physical energy than intelligence on this wantonly unintelligible tale ... To lay any blame on the performers for the nonsense that takes place on the screen would be an obvious injustice. ........

Source: Wikipedia