Yield to the Night

Mary Hilton shot a woman dead in the street and was sentenced to hang. The film shows her in the cell through the days before the execution. She is not alone in it; two wardens sit with her in shifts and never take their eyes off her. The light is never turned off. In flashbacks the road to the killing is told: a man, another woman, and everything Mary lost. J. Lee Thompson directs. Diana Dors plays Mary. The source is Joan Henry's novel. Diana Dors was known in Britain at the time as a blonde star; here she plays without makeup or adornment, and the part counts as the most serious work of her career. The film is often mentioned as having been inspired by the Ruth Ellis case. That is not quite right: Joan Henry's novel was published before Ellis was hanged. But the film opened shortly after that hanging and fell into the middle of the British argument about capital punishment. The form is deliberately closed: it takes place almost entirely inside the cell and the passage of time is given through waiting. The film is openly against the death penalty and does it without making Mary innocent; that she committed the killing is not in question. Hanging effectively ended in Britain in 1965, and this film was part of the public argument that led there. Who it is for: viewers who follow British cinema of the fifties and films about capital punishment. Who it is not for: it is claustrophobic, the pace is deliberately slow, and the ending goes where it is known to go.