The Death Cell in “YIELD TO THE NIGHT” (1956)

 Yield to the Night is an astonishing film in several ways: from its first, explosive opening scene to the final shot of an extinguishing cigarette that might have lived a moment longer than its smoker, it is a film with an effective agenda that also happens to be intriguingly crafted. Here, the story-within-a-story premise of the Women’s Prison Film is reduced to the solitary drama of protagonist Mary Hilton (Diana Dors), a woman sentenced to death for murder. 

 
Hilton is supposed to be likeable while being unlikeable: she isn’t innocent and does not regret her crime, she bitterly rejects all those who love her, yet she still receives the viewer’s sympathy and emphatic horror over her fate.

Most of the film is set in a cell, a sun yard, and a visiting room. Lively and detailed flashbacks, starkly contrasting the cell scenes of the film, unroll the details to Hilton’s crime – her affair with a pianist, the pianist’s unhappy affair with another woman and subsequent suicide, and finally, Hilton’s murder of this other woman.

The rest of the film shows how Hilton’s character waits, unremorseful about her crime, remorseful about her heartbreak, constantly hoping for a repeal of her sentence. She seems less optimistic about this repeal than the other characters in the film who bring it up again and again – as survivors and prospective mourners, they have more urgency.

The hope of being acquitted plays into the terror of Hilton’s incarceration: uncertain whether the week might be her last, she is reluctant to over-read things, while simultaneously pondering her imminent death in what seems to be the most horrific form of boredom imaginable. With nothing to do, she watches the objects in the room:

“I know every mark and blemish in this cell; every crack in the walls, the scratches on the wooden chairs, the place where the paint has peeled off the ceiling, and the door at the foot of my bed … the door without a handle. I know it better than any room I’ve ever lived in.”

Her words are overlaid with the visuals of what she describes. Here is an expressive use of space in a Women’s Prison Film; or rather, lack of space and the detailed reading of its borders when there is nothing else to do.

The door without a handle of course is the door to the room in which Hilton will be hanged. Though the cell itself has no bars, as often seen in “prison films”, Hilton clings to the bars in her bedstead as if to quote the genre. The Smiths later used the still for the cover art of the iconic Singles Album. 

The portrayal of the matrons differs from other women’s prison drama films: though some matrons are at times depicted as sympathetic, they are usually portrayed as power-hungry and sadistic characters. The matrons in Yield to the Night are always two on duty, changing shifts. They, like Hilton, sit in the death cell all day long. At times they try to cheer her, at times they take on the viewer’s position: Hilton’s impending death depresses them as much as it depresses the protagonist. Like her, they are prisoners, similarly filled with dread at the thought of what awaits Hilton. Time is passed with distractions such as board games and card playing. Absurdly, their greatest worry seems to be Hilton’s health and wellbeing – there is always discussion about Hilton’s mealtimes and sleeping patterns. At times their concern and behavior becomes borderline ridiculous (and an effective criticism of the absurd brutality of death penalty): when Hilton develops a blister on her foot, she is delicately cared for, as if the body that is to be executed must be fully intact in order for the punishment to be carried out.

 

While Hilton shuns all characters from her former life (her mother, brother, and former husband) she becomes particularly close to of the matrons, portrayed by Yvonne Mitchell, who develops something of a guardian angel-like image.

While building a house of cards (building instable spaces within other, much-too-stable spaces) she opens up about her life story and how she became a person who spends her day in a death cell. She mentions her failed love life – which is a signifier for a failed life all together, not unlike Hilton’s; these scenes also illustrate the cultural and social situation in post war Britain. 

The film is coincidentally NOT based on an actual case, though it might seem so. Its screenplay was co-written by Joan Henry who also wrote the book on which the film is based. Henry herself went to prison for several months – her experiences play into her book and film The Weak and The Wicked (1954). The woman upon whom the film could be based, Ruth Ellis, coincidentally happened to appear in a cameo in one of Diana Dors films – her life was later turned into a film in Mike Newell’s Dance with a Stranger (1984).

Yield to the Night’s promotional material is indicative of the two sides of the Women’s Prison Film. It shows the two apparently different viewing approaches of this genre: its exploitative, sleazy side on the one hand and its “problem-themed”, “political” or blatantly socially critical side on the other (what might actually be the more politically progressive film of these two approaches is questionable yet won’t be discussed here). Yield to the Night in itself is most likely a film of the second half, its publicity however promised audiences a film of the first sort. Its second title, significantly, was Blonde Sinner.

Further reading:

Diana Dors: An Angry Young Woman – detailed Article in The Independent by Melanie Williams, June 30^th 2006.

A Hanging, by George Orwell