I don't have overly much to add to the other excellent reviews here (esp. Joe Pearce's) except to say this is a surprisingly good film, and Dors has a rare opportunity to shine as an actress in a role that has more to offer her than normal.Well worth watching, this, whether or not you draw parallels with the Ruth Ellis case or sympathise with the posture regarding capital punishment.

Who doesn't like a good I shot someone, got caught and went to prison movie? Here the focus is on life leading up to possibly death for the one who committed the murder and of course the story enfolds for us to take-in what drove her to it. Love was the power and some really strong passion is what we find out. In that heat of the moment where all the senses are dulled or in denial, strange things can happen and do and here is an example of one of them. In an emotional state human beings say or do certain things that even they wonder why after the fact. The prisons are full of people who acted this out. Here, it is a woman being prepared for the death penalty and we go through the countdown with her. Will she be pardoned? Will she keep her cool or go nuts? Will she go free i.e. life in prison which is a type of living death? The movie makes and takes the point right to the end. One thing that caught my attention is that they had two matrons with this condemned woman at all times night or day recording everything she does in the same room. They make her eat, sleep, take walks and console her forcing her to get up and get dressed too. She also gets 24 hour medical and has a Pastor on standby too. I suppose this is normal for death watch procedures but done differently in different countries. Interesting to watch that interaction as well. Decent movie that helps to display all the range of human emotions for a situation like this and leading up to it too. Watch, snack and ...

This is a powerful movie. Diana Dors is the star. She's on screen virtually the whole time and turns in a fine performance. It's not what we expect from Diana Dors: She is not a sex pot or glamor girl.She plays an unhappy young woman who is taken in by a man. She kills him -- very early in the film; so this is not a spoiler. She is sent to prison. Much of the film is set in prison and there are many flashbacks.Yvonne Mitchell is also superb as a sympathetic prison matron.In her later years, Dors went from voluptuous to very large. She is shocking in the first movie I ever saw her in: "Baby Love." And she's large, good, and naked in the fine "Deep End." The woman could act and that is very clear in "Yield to the Night." She wears no, or very little makeup. The close-ups show a pretty but unglamorous woman.It's film noir in structure. And it's one of the few in which a woman is the primary character. Look for this one!

'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.