The Key movie storyline. During World War II, tugboats conduct what are called salvage missions, picking up disabled ships. Not well equipped with weaponry, the tugs are sitting ducks for enemy fire. As such, the crew working the tugs have precarious lives, many with deep seated emotional problems. Before the Americans join the war, ex-American military man David Ross is assigned to captain a tug for the British military.
He is shown the ropes by an old friend, Captain Chris Ford. Chris currently shares a flat with a young beautiful Italian-Swiss woman named Stella, who came with the flat and who lives a reclusive life there. Chris is the latest in a long line of tugboat Captains who have lived there, each who has found another person to take over the flat and the associated looking after of Stella if anything is to happen to him.
That person is given a key to the flat, the key only to be used if needed. The first in the series was Phillip Westerby, to whom Stella was to be married before Phillip was killed. Chris, who, in turn, now loves Stella and wants to marry her, asks David to be the next in line. David reluctantly agrees. As David learns the pressures associated with his work, he begins also to understand the emotional turmoil that Stella has gone through, which changes his opinion about “the key”. Stella’s view of the key also changes with David.
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 (later republished as The Distant Shore and The Key) and was directed by Sir Carol Reed. William Holden, Sophia Loren and Trevor Howard starred in the production.
The key to a flat in wartime Britain may augur bad luck for a succession of tug captains of the Royal Navy whose task is to rescue crippled ships in “U-boat Alley.” As each takes possession from his unfortunate predecessor, the flat’s other occupant, a Swiss expatriate named Stella, apparently goes with it. The latest captain struggles with his conflicting fears and affection for its apparent jinx.
About the 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. In this explanation the Production Code Administration unexpectedly accepted the happy ending but a few reels of the darker ending were distributed to meet the demands of cinemas during its opening run.
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 she loses her relationship at the end. The source states that the second version was submitted to the PCA and a certificate issued in June 1958.
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. audiences and was a more “conventional conclusion.”
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. The casting of Holden and Loren necessitated script rationales for their presence in 1941 England, but the appointment of an American in the RNVR as a ship’s captain during the early years of World War II was historically possible.
The Key (1958)
Directed by: Carol Reed
Starring: William Holden, Sophia Loren, Trevor Howard, Oskar Homolka, Kieron Moore, Bernard Lee, Beatrix Lehmann, Bryan Forbes, Sidney Vivian, Rupert Davies, Russell Waters, Irene Handl
Screenplay by: Carl Foreman
Production Design by: Wilfred Shingleton
Cinematography by: Oswald Morris
Film Editing by: Bert Bates
Costume Design by: Beatrice Dawson
Art Direction by: Geoffrey Drake
Music by: Malcolm Arnold
Makeup Department: David Aylott, Barbara Ritchie
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: July 1, 1958
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