The Key

The Key (1958)

He had the life expectancy of a match.

In wartime England, circa 1941, poorly-armed tugs are sent into "U-Boat Alley" to rescue damaged Allied ships. An American named David Ross arrives to captain one of these tugs. He's given a key by a fellow tugboat-man -- a key to an apartment and its pretty female resident. Should something happen to the friend, Ross can use the key.

Date of release
1958-05-28
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (34)
Runtime
2h 14m
Genres
Drama, Romance, War
Director
Carol Reed

Casting

Interesting facts

The Key is a 1958 British-American war film set in 1941 during the Battle of the Atlantic. It was based on the 1951 novel Stella by Jan de Hartog and was directed by Carol Reed. William Holden, Sophia Loren and Trevor Howard starred in the production.

Production

Two endings for The Key were filmed. According to "Notes" at the Turner Classic Movies entry for the film and attributed to the New York Times, one was filmed in which David gets aboard the train for a "happy" ending. In the other, purportedly filmed to satisfy the American Motion Picture Production Code by showing that David and Stella pay for their sexual relationship, he just misses catching it, but insists he will search for and find her.

However a published history of British films subjected to PCA scrutiny before their American release presents a slightly different version. After an initial rejection of the story outline in 1952 by the PCA, Carl Foreman resurrected the Stella project in 1957 and was offered two acceptable story lines: one in which Stella has an unconventional but asexual relationship with the captains, the other "a clearcut story of sin and retribution" in which…

A biography of director Carol Reed by Peter William Evans supports the latter contention. It asserts that the original ending released in Europe had David missing the train, and that Reed intended to convey that his vow to find Stella has no more substance than "the steam in which both they and the moving train are shrouded." Evans adds that the happy ending of David catching the train was made for U.S.

De Hartog's novel, originally entitled Stella, concerned Dutch tugboat captains who fled to England with their craft in 1940 (as represented by the character Captain Van Dam and based on historical fact) and a British woman named Stella.

Filming of The Key was done aboard H.M.S. Restive (W39), an Assurance class Admiralty tug of the Royal Navy from the same era.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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