TURN THE KEY SOFTLY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 812, 18 February 1955, Page 20

TURN THE KEY SOFTLY

(Rank) To traipse three sections out of town for a mildly sociological thriller may seem an odd sort of way to round off a weekend well, or well enough begun with Father Brown. The fact is I missed this one on its first run in Wellington a month or two ago, and reappearing in the suburbs it seemed a more likely piece than anything else on Main Street. It turns out not a first-rate film, but good in parts and interesting to the end. It’s about the first day of freedom of three women-a gentle, pathetic old shoplifter (Kathleen Harrison), a goodtime girl (Joan Collins) and a young woman (Yvonne Mitchell) who'd helped an unworthy lover with a burglarywho have just spent a year in jail, The point of the \story, by John Brophy, seems to be that people tend to be what they are and that life can be a pretty sad and unsympathetic affair-which are propositions I don’t quarrel with for a moment. The interesting thing from my point of view is what the director (Jack Lee) and his photographer (Geoffrey Unsworth) have done with this material; for there are more than a few quite memorable sequences, and a dramatic climax in which the unworthy lover (Terence Morgan) is hunted on and about a rooftop is as tense as anything of the kind I’ve seen for some time. Some of the acting is worth watching, too.