Rent Yield to the Night (1956)

Well acted Warning - Yield to the Night review by RP

Diana Dors is often remembered by the roles she played later in life. But this film reminds us what a good actor she was. The film has a cast that makes every part, big or small, meaningful and important. The story of a good girl driven bad is not so interesting as the scenes in the prison itself. The Prison Guards waiting with the condemned criminal. Passing the time, with their own small bits of life and interests. While awaiting the all too meaningless waste. Often over looked but a film that should be among the very best of classic British cinema.

Death Row. - Yield to the Night review by Steve

This is an odd blend of genres but most potently a protest film which makes a case against the death penalty. Diana Dors plays a shopgirl who murders her boyfriend's rich lover. It relates her last few days in a procedural narrative style, before she hangs. But it also feels like film noir, with the voice over, flashbacks and expressionist photography.

It is most remembered for the casting of DD as the guilty woman. She gives a competent, subdued performance outside her usual range. Her face is scrubbed of makeup and her rather blank ordinariness is emphasised. This is no monster. The implication is that the murder was temporary insanity. But the character is so passive it's a struggle for the star to sustain interest.

Compare the dynamism of Susan Hayward in the similar but superior I Want to Live! two years later. There are parallels between Yield to the Night and the hanging of Ruth Ellis in 1955. Director J.Lee Thompson points out that the source novel by Joan Henry preceded the Ellis case, but the film came after and the publicity must have been influential.

So, the release was topical. But not influential; the death penalty remained for another 13 years. Thompson directs with a flourish and the b&w photography is artistic. Yvonne Mitchell gives a typically nuanced performance as a sympathetic screw. But the appeal of the film rests heavily on Diana's stunt casting, and she just about pulls it off.