Yield to the Night

I just watched this film again after some years and felt very sad and upset at the fate of Mary Hilton. Diana Dors gave a performance of true excellence and power. The setting within the prison cell with the female wardens as supporting players is stark and yet sympathetic . Diana gave a compelling performance and so well were in supported by the rest of the cast especially Yvonne Mitchell and Olga Lindo. I was so very impressed by the entire film. It was a shame that Dors was ignored by the Academy but I suppose in the 50s non-American actresses were not considered as the films were mainly "art house" films. Enjoyed the whole experience.

I came to this film with pretty superficial view of Diana Dors. I couldn't have been more wrong. She gives a career best performance. On so many levels it stands head and shoulders above mid 50s Brit cinema. Truly international standard. Great ensemble acting; strong direction; and some lovely cinematography. It was clearly a powerful piece in its time - dramatically as well as a piece of social agitprop. It's still worthy of your attention more than 60 years on. What a shame this part didn't lead to the acting opportunities Diana deserved.

Diana Dors in her first dramatic role, and last before her unsuccessful venture into Hollywood, sees her trade in her glamorous image for a more realistic and down to earth performance as a woman who finds herself on death row after committing a crime of passion. The film, based on a John Henry novel, has obvious similarities to the real life drama of Ruth Ellis, who murdered her ex-lover on a busy London street and become the last British woman to be hung a year before this film was made.

Dors had become one of the more famous starlets to emerge in Britain's post-war attempt at a Hollywood-like star system. Her familiarity with British audiences no doubt ensured sympathy for her character, which played partly on her bad-girl image. However, this was more than a mere star vehicle, and it saw her transform herself from a star to a serious actress. The American distributors seemed to miss the point somewhat, titling the film on its release there, 'Blonde Sinner'.

The film obviously draws upon the controversial issue of capital punishment. There is no doubt that, despite us witnessing her murder in cold blood, our sympathies are meant to lie with Dors' character. This is of course partly due to her star persona but also because of the way in which the film is directed. Rarely do we see the face of her victim who we learn nothing of apart from his cold attitude towards her ex-lover, Michael Craig, whom Dors has shown nothing but compassion for. Her callous attitude towards his tragic New Years eve suicide is exemplary of this, when she shrugs him off as someone who had just been a nuisance to her.

However, the film is commendable in that manages to avoid mere melodrama. We don't just get a one-sided view of events. We are left in no doubt that the Dors character is herself an adultress who committed a murder with malice and forethought. The issue the film achieves in getting across is the detrimental effect the capital punishment system has on those who are around it. Not only do we see the effect it has on Dors' family but also we get an insight of the wardesses who are with her for her final days. In particular we recognise the discipline shown by Yvonne Mitchell's character, Macfarlane, a young wardess who is drawn with compassion and sympathy towards Dors, and yet must contain her emotions especially during the last agonisingly pensive hours. There is also a feeling that we should not be overly sympathetic towards Dors, as she is rebuked by an elderly Christian lady that visits her for being too self-pitying and for showing little or no remorse. This theme is of course drawn on in more detail in Tim Robbins' recent death row drama 'Dead Man Walking'.

J. Lee Thompson's taut direction shows signs of his later atmospheric Stateside successes such as 'Cape Fear'. The expressionistic filming techniques used to add to the claustrophobic tension of the prison cell scenes are particularly effective. Yvonne Mitchell provides a strong supporting role as the young wardess who befriends Dors. However, it is Dors herself who should be applauded most of all for her emotional and naturalistic performance as the woman awaiting her fate. Some of the film's themes may seem rather cliched to a modern audience but I would imagine it hit a nerve when the issue was at the forethought of the British consciousness.

'Yield to the Night'is a child of its time, the mid fifties. Set against the grim background of the condemned cell in what is presumed to be Holloway prison (the only hanging prison for women at that time),it is a strong statement against capital punishment in general, and for a condemned woman, in particular. By 1956, popular opinion in Britain had turned against the death penalty, fuelled by a series of unpopular executions, Derek Bentley, the educationally subnormal youth hanged in 1953 for the shooting of a policeman on a Croydon factory rooftop when his seventeen year old accomplice, Chris Craig, had fired the fatal shot (Craig was too young to hang); the executions of two women in quick succession, Louisa Merrifield and Stylou Christofi, and the cause celebre of Ruth Ellis, who shot her lover, David Blakely, outside a North London public house.

Obviously Ellis was the inspiration for Dors' character, Mary Hilton (both blondes, both shoot their lovers while emotionally distraught). Director J. Lee Thompson had worked with Diana Dors in the 1954 film 'The Weak and the Wicked', which, like 'Yield to the Night', was based on a book by Joan Henry. Times had changed, even during those two intervening years, and Thompson yearned for a broader, more hard hitting statement than his earlier offering. The action scenes are much pacier, with quick scene changes and remarkable (for its day) camera angles - the shots of Dors around a fountain amount to a cinematic work of art, and the murder itself is a tour de force of close ups, almost unbearable suspense and facial expressions (note the face of the uncredited cab driver when he realises what Mary has done).

We skip the trial to the first prison scene where the governor, played to perfection by that most authoritative of actresses, Marie Ney, informs Mary that her appeal had been denied. Geoffrey Keen, as a thoughtful chaplain, leaves the cell when Mary's lawyer appears, played by the veteran Charles Lloyd Pack, with an optimism that borders on insouciance. Mary settles into the daily routine, comforted by Liam Redmond, as the caring doctor. Flashbacks trace Mary's failed romance with Jim, a once ambitious pianist whose inner emotions are in turmoil, who is reduced to playing in nightclubs and acting as a third rate host, dancing with various women, including Mary's nemesis, the well heeled Lucy. Mary is besotted with him, but he is fatally attracted to Lucy, fuelling Mary's inveterate hatred for her. Jim commits suicide, leaving a note that is addressed to Lucy, pushing Mary over the edge. The flashbacks are not as convincing as the rest of the film, but perhaps that is due to their nature - we already know that Mary has shot Lucy, so the lead up to that cataclysmic situation is somehow diluted.

However, the prison scenes more than make up for that. The set is so incredibly realistic, down to the 'door with no handle', the door through which Mary will step, on execution morning. As the clock ticks down to that fateful day, some of the finest character actresses of the day shine through the gloom - Joan Miller, whose calm exterior finally cracks when Mary's reprieve is denied, and who entwines the shell-shocked Mary's fingers around a welcome mug of tea; prolific character actress Marianne Stone, as the flustered stand in wardress; the fearsome Olga Lindo, magnificent as veteran Warder Hill, whose granite exterior finally succumbs to pity as she strokes Mary's hair, a wonderfully touching nuance of direction which would not have been possible in 'The Weak and the Wicked'. Athene Seyler, who was also in 'The Weak and the Wicked' appears as a philanthropic 'prison visitor' who gives Mary flowers from her garden. However, the performance of Yvonne Mitchell, as the caring, Christian wardress, who offers Mary a blindfold to help her sleep (much to the chagrin of Hill), is towering in its tenderness and vulnerability, even getting away with the line: 'Have you ever thought that we ALL die, some morning'? (My own mother died at 7:45 pm!) Amazingly, the line works because of the well drawn relationship between the two.

The ending is dramatic - Mary is kneeling in the chapel with the chaplain while the hangman and his assistant are watching from behind an open door - we only see their hands, the hands which will put her to death, another triumph of creative direction and camera work. On the morning of the fateful day Mary leaves her partly smoked cigarette in the ash tray and her silhouette is seen from the front, arriving through THAT door, with the chaplain behind her, a detail that was incorrect, because the assistant executioner would be behind her, having tied her hands behind her back - in 1956 the secrets of capital punishment were still closely guarded, and would not be made public until the autobiography of chief hangman Albert Pierrepoint (1977) and his one time assistant, Syd Dernley in the late eighties.

Dors showed that she really could act, and that the British film industry was capable of producing work of realism and depth, a much better film than Susan Hayward's much vaunted film about Ruth Ellis's American equivalent, Barbara Graham, 'I want to live'! And the message? A life for a life is futile, and life should be for living. Yield to this fifties gem of true excellence.

True "Blonde bombshells" of a starring nature come along only once or twice in a decade, and the number from, say, 1930 to 1960 is not all that many: Jean Harlow, Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, Diana Dors, Jayne Mansfield, Kim Novak, and that about does it. Of these, Harlow died too young and as an actress was memorable mainly in comedy, Turner turned into a very good actress as the years passed, Monroe was greatly loved but her true acting talent beyond her natural charisma was not really all that great, and Novak was passable. Mansfield was Mansfield. Diana Dors, however, despite her 'blonde bombshell' reputation and being probably the least beautiful of that group (one could hardly call her even very pretty) was a very legitimate actress, out of RADA, and gave excellent acting performances right from the start of her film career. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to notice at the time, which may have been her own fault for letting that reputation get out of hand.

This is the very best I have seen her, and her outing here as the doomed murderess is about as good a lead female performance as any to be seen in English films of the 1950s. It is truly amazing that both her performance and this film are not better known. Maybe the Hollywood-made I WANT TO LIVE of two years later ended up stealing this film's thunder, as they both cover the imprisonment and pending death of the protagonist. But only a portion of Susan Hayward's performance takes place inside prison walls, whereas in this film, outside the opening and some flashbacks, the entire story takes place in less than 20 days in a holding cell, perhaps 20 x 25 feet in size, and goes outside it only when the prisoner is allowed out for exercise in a high-walled yard. That there are always two warders taking shifts in the holding cell with Dors, tending to her every need but also imposing a strict regimen upon her, somehow adds to the total claustrophobia of the film, and it is irrepressibly morbid from beginning to end. But it is also terrific! Although the major burden falls on Dors, every performance in the film save one is exceptional, that one being Michael Craig's as her suicidal boyfriend. Craig is a good actor, but he was the wrong choice here, as he simply never really seems like the kind of guy who could be brought to suicide by unrequited love. Lawrence Harvey might have been perfect for it. But the great Yvonne Mitchell, as the youngest warder, is superb. It seems as though, from beginning to end, she has but one expression, which never changes, on her face, yet we see the feelings she is hiding underneath at every moment, and ultimately learn that those feelings are not confined to only the prisoner's situation.

Some reviews have mentioned this film as an indictment of capital punishment, but I don't see it that way, and only once in the entire film is anything said in that direction: One of the warders says that we mustn't forget the person Dors murdered, and another one answers that "...another death will not bring her back". Unlike in the Hayward film, we know right from the beginning that Dors is guilty of this crime, and although to the very end she never repents the murder, we still feel sympathy for her (I felt a lot more for her than for the Hayward character), surely a reaction engendered by the excellent screenplay, Dors' superb performance, and J. Lee Thompson's inventive direction.

Given the budget and the acting talent on view here, I do not see how this film could have possibly been any better, and it should prove a major discovery to anyone now seeing it for the first time.