Execution Scenes That Never Were...

This is a list of television shows and films in which a female character is executed, but for whatever reason, the event is not shown on-screen - sometimes we see the build-up, the aftermath, or some dramatic effect - but nothing of the execution itself.

Tess - 1979 - (Nastassja Kinski as Tess Durbeyfield)

To be fair, the film is faithful to Thomas Hardy's book "Tess of the D'urbervilles" up until the point Tess is apprehended by police as she sleeps amongst a circle of stones at the end of the film. The book, at a later stage, continues the story to describe a black flag being raised above the prison to signify that Tess has been hanged.

Dance with a Stranger - 1985 - (Miranda Richardson as Ruth Ellis)

This film deals more with the circumstances that led to Ruth Ellis being convicted of murdering David Blakeney, and ends before her execution, using the clever device of a last letter being read by Miranda Richardson to wrap up the film.

Another Life - 2001 - (Natasha Little as Edith Thompson)

We see the fascinating deterioration of Edith Thompson as she awaits her fate in London's Holloway Prison, but the film leaves the act of her execution to our imagination.

North and South Book II - 1986 - TV (Kirstie Alley as Virgilia Hazard)

Kirstie's character is hanged off-screen for murdering a Congressman. We see pictures of the gallows being readied for her execution through the windows of a cell during a last visit by her brother.

The Story of Women - 1988 - (Isabelle Huppert as Marie Latour)

In this French film, Isabelle Huppert plays an unlikeable and unsympathetic illegal abortionist who is sent to the guillotine when one of her operations goes tragically wrong. She is executed off-screen. A story with many parallel's to the more recent "Vera Drake"

Yield to the Night - 1956 - (Diana Dors as Mary Price Hilton)

The film that proved that Diana Dors could play serious roles, she is fantastic in her portrayal of a murderess awaiting execution for killing her boyfriend's mistress. The film was made barely a year after Ruth Ellis had been hanged, and inevitable drew a lot of comparisons to real-life events. We see Dors in the execution cell adjacent to the gallows, a wardrobe is rolled back to reveal a passage to the death chamber, and the camera goes to black as she is led through to her execution.