Rent Turn the Key Softly (1953)

Three Women, One Damp Day Out - Turn the Key Softly review by griggs

For a modest British post-war noir melodrama, this one has real atmosphere. Turn the Key Softly follows three women leaving Holloway on the same morning – a shoplifting granny, a middle-class “good girl” who took the rap for her boyfriend, and a young sex worker trying to go straight – through their first 24 hours of “freedom”.

The setup is great, and the film’s at its best when it leans into the texture: boarding houses, buses, cafés, the sense that London might swallow you whole the second you step outside the gate. You can almost feel the damp on the pavements in the finale. Yvonne Mitchell and Kathleen Harrison bring real weight; Joan Collins is lively but written a bit thin.

It doesn’t quite build into the emotional gut punch it clearly wants to be, relying on coincidence more than character. Still, as a small, sincere slice of bruised post-war life, it’s well worth a look.

Social Realism. - Turn the Key Softly review by Steve

After World War 2 there was a movement of social realist films years before the British New Wave made this approach fashionable. This is also one of many women in prison films made in the UK in the fifties. There are three interwoven stories each about a convict released at the same time, into their first few hours of freedom.

As usual in British films back then, the characters are defined by their social status. Yvonne Mitchell plays an upper middle class woman who got stiffed by her crooked boyfriend. Joan Collins is a working class good girl who can be tempted to do tricks for the nicer things in life. Kathleen Harrison generates an excess of pathos as a lonely, elderly, uneducated shoplifter.

Mitchell is always worth watching and she's the best on show here and gets the most screen time. Terence Morgan as her upmarket criminal lover is so creepy he's hard to watch. The last part of the film involves him being chased over the rooftops of the west end after a safe job, which is quite exciting, but strays a long way from the premise of the film.

Kathleen Harrison as the threadbare repeat offender caught the attention of the critics in the most sentimental and tragic of the three tales. Though she is patronised in a way that would have been avoided by the New Wave directors. There are few political points being made about the experiences of released prisoners. It's just an entertaining insight into the lives of others.