This is a prison film by a director I personally have always admired: J Lee-Thompson. It centres around the Jean Raymond character (Glynis Johns) of a woman entering prison for fraud. I can say this without it being a spoiler because the fact she entered gaol, and why, has nothing to do with the plot (there is no plot really) except used merely as a vehicle to start the film rolling.
Once rolling, Johns meets various other female prisoners while incarcerated and to almost each one the film fades into a vignette of the "facts" that led each one to wind up in prison. It is definitely a film of its time, a strikingly clichéd British film of the '30s, '40s and early '50s style and was made with a method dying out by the mid-50's when British cinema began a darker more realistic mode of direction.
This film has nothing on many earlier American prison dramas ("20,000 Years in Sing Sing" some twenty years before for example) but the film was never intended in my opinion to be anything overtly powerful. Though there is no direct sermonising about right and wrong written into the film it was directed intentionally to make one think what prison may be like (at least for that generation) while the film rides on a very comfortable sponge through tranquil waters, despite trying to focus on rehabilitation. Very muddled.
Regrettably, the film's earlier momentum starts to fizzle out about halfway through as the vignettes continually are sugar-coated (the only possible exception is the story of the gaoled women in the infirmary involving her baby) and the acting is rather appalling with a rather dreadful ending by today's terms. Even the attempt at humour with Sid James's family is more sad than funny (perhaps that was the intention).
Not one of Lee-Thompson's best and I rate it a generous 2 out of 5 stars but is worth a single sitting as a curio.
Once rolling, Johns meets various other female prisoners while incarcerated and to almost each one the film fades into a vignette of the "facts" that led each one to wind up in prison. It is definitely a film of its time, a strikingly clichéd British film of the '30s, '40s and early '50s style and was made with a method dying out by the mid-50's when British cinema began a darker more realistic mode of direction.
This film has nothing on many earlier American prison dramas ("20,000 Years in Sing Sing" some twenty years before for example) but the film was never intended in my opinion to be anything overtly powerful. Though there is no direct sermonising about right and wrong written into the film it was directed intentionally to make one think what prison may be like (at least for that generation) while the film rides on a very comfortable sponge through tranquil waters, despite trying to focus on rehabilitation. Very muddled.
Regrettably, the film's earlier momentum starts to fizzle out about halfway through as the vignettes continually are sugar-coated (the only possible exception is the story of the gaoled women in the infirmary involving her baby) and the acting is rather appalling with a rather dreadful ending by today's terms. Even the attempt at humour with Sid James's family is more sad than funny (perhaps that was the intention).
Not one of Lee-Thompson's best and I rate it a generous 2 out of 5 stars but is worth a single sitting as a curio.