Turn the Key Softly

Rather cliched plot, but some nice period detail, if your interested in old film of London, youll really enjoy this tearjerking melodrama. A very young Joan Collins is adorable as the easily led West End girl Stella. Plenty of other classic British Movie faces too.

Ideal for a winter's Sunday afternoon. Well scripted, directed, and photographed, with some interesting location shots of 1950s London.

I loved this movie! The three women destinies in a large metropolis (London -1950s) after they come out of jail with very different expectations seems to be quite an usual storyline in those years. London itself --as any large city-- looks completely different from the present London, although through this gloriously misty black and white photography it has a nostalgic Memory Lane feeling absolutely unique.

One wishes to have been able to walk those streets and feel that particular atmosphere, completely gone by now.

The film: It's so very well acted and edited that when it comes to the end, it seems to have only lasted for ten or fifteen minutes. The three women stories are quite banal but engaging because they are displayed alternately so we get to know these characters one by one and at the same time, since they run parallel lives and will keep in touch through different daily happenings.

The beauty and sex appeal of a young Joan Collins was something to be seen. She was gorgeous! specially at the beginning, when still in jail and without any noticeable make up, she was stunning. As stunning as Joan, but on a different level was Yvonne Mitchell, a sedated beauty, classy and cool, very elegant and certainly as grand as any titled lady (many titled ladies will kill their grandmothers if they could look like her).

The sequence on top of the building with the intervening police was quite nerve wreaking and superbly filmed and edited. The scenes with the old lady --Kathleen Harrison-- and her beloved dog, Johnny, were the sentimental segment that cemented the different episodes among these three women.

There is a crucial scene where the title "Turn the key softly" makes sense because it was dependent on that, that one of the protagonists could escape a cruel and unjust outcome. Even if nowadays the strings pulled in this movie to keep one interested in the story telling are too obvious, the film doesn't fail in entertaining one from beginning to end.

Everybody deserves another chance. Newly released from prison, three women face the challenges of reformed life on the "outside". Each have their own plans for moving on with life. The youngest (played by a stunningly beautiful Joan Collins in her first leading film role) is determined to marry a sincere young man with whom she had kept in correspondence. The second one appears to have been innocently convicted due to a shifty boyfriend who left her to take the wrap for the crime he had committed. The third is a sweet little old lady who routinely got convicted of shop lifting. - The film follows all three women through their first day of freedom. Young Joan Collins is excited when her fiancé suggests a very near wedding date. The innocent one finds employment, and the old lady goes back to her modest boarding house where her beloved little dog "Johnnie" was waiting for her return. - Of course there are complication, lots of drama, and a heart breaking ending. The grim realities of early 1950s life in London make for a believable backdrop to the individual character studies. Life was tough, and for single women even tougher. Adding a prison record only adds to the challenge. - I was very much entertained by this film. A simple story told with warmth and empathy. Be sure to have your Kleenex box handy, it's a mushy one!

Yvonne Mitchell, Joan Collins and Kathleen Harrison are released from prison into the hustle and bustle of London on the same day, with varying degrees of resolution to go straight. They agree to meet for dinner at a posh restaurant -- Miss Mitchell's treat. The movie covers the day and their varying success.

It's well performed by three actresses: Miss Harrison plays her scrublady from SCROOGE, transported a century and a quarter into the future. jugged on fifteen counts of shoplifting; Miss Mitchell is an well-to-do young woman who loved unwisely but too well and took the fall for her burglar boyfriend; and Joan Collins.... well, she looks like a cheap piece of goods, but she's scheduled to marry a bus driver.

It's based on a novel and the screenplay is, I fear, somewhat muddled, with the random nature of events leading to random outcomes. The actresses give excellent performances, and director Jack Lee, in cooperation with cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, sets up the final fifteen minutes in a striking manner. He clearly had a fine eye for the streets of the city, having worked for the GPO as assistant director to LONDON CAN TAKE IT! His abilities helming a fiction movie were shakier, but given the performances and visuals, this one is worth a look.