Ma vie commence en Malaisie

A Town Like Alice is now an old film. However it has a certain directness and freshness which makes it quite watchable.

A Town like Alice is the story of an English nurse, who is trapped in Malaya with a group of Englihs women during the Japanese invasion. As the group can't be categorised by the Japanese army into a useful pigeonhole, they are forced to walk from city to city looking for a place to be prisoners-of-war.

The story is a strong one and the movie doesn't let the book down. Shot in excellent locations in Malaysia, the only problems are fitting the breadth of the story into a limited time.

I suppose that it should be confessed at the outset that I had the hots for Ms McEnna in her youth. Nevertheless, I still think that this is an excellent movie of the 1950's war genre.

Ginny and Peter Finch provide typically understated performances that are reminiscent of 'Ice Cold In Alex' and 'The Cruel Sea'. Solid, sterling, stiff-upper-lip-stuff that has no place in the spineless, simpering, metro-sexual third millennium.

I have never read Shute's novel, so I cannot comment on what liberties have been taken, but viewed without prejudice as a movie outlining Japanese brutality and human endurance it is still a well-realised piece of work. Everyone gives a thoroughly believable turn, both Caucasian and Oriental alike, as Ms McEnna's character concludes 'you can't really hate anyone' in the end. Though the Japanese - like their Nazi counterparts - did their very best to merit it.

Ms McKenna leads a group of unwanted western women and children, for whom no Japanese officer wants responsibility. So; they get shunted from one place to another, on foot, inadequately fed, and without medical assistance. Inevitably; they begin dying. Finch plays a captured Aussie running trucks for the Japanese. Filmed in black-&-white, in Britain and on location, it offers a very believable turn upon the miasmic swamps, crippling heat, humidity and deluging rain.

Of course, it's a love story too. And here again Ginny and Peter play their parts to perfection. I defy any true romantic not to be rendered lachrymose by her realisation of his survival and their final meeting at the end. Her hasty, last-minute application of cosmetics is particularly touching and well-observed. As if he'd care a hoot one way or the other.

It's a great old feel-good movie for the austerity generation. I give it nine stars and good luck to 'em all I say.

This is a moving film with a stunning performance by Virginia McKenna. It also has Peter Finch in a portrayal of what must be the quintessential Australian character of the period.

The film is told in flashback as Virginia McKenna's character, Jean Paget, goes back to Malaya after WW2 to help the villagers who saved her life. We learn that Jean was captured there by the Japanese along with a group of other British women and children.

They are sent from town to town on foot. However, no Japanese will take responsibility for them - they walk hundreds of miles and many die. They encounter an Australian, Joe Harman, played by Peter Finch, who finds them food and medicine. Finally, the survivors see out the rest of the war in a Malay village. After the war, Jean travels back to Malaya and then to Australia to learn of Joe's fate.

I saw this film in a packed cinema in Sydney when it was first released in 1956. I was quite young, but there would no doubt have been many in the audience who had first-hand experience of war with the Japanese, including my father. The film resonated with Australians who did not feel great love for the Japanese at the time, mainly due to their treatment of prisoners of war.

Also at that time, Australians were rarely depicted on the screen, but Aussie, Joe Harman, has a key role, which accorded with the idealised national character of the day, unfortunately including his use of derogatory terms for native peoples, common at the time.

Although much of the film was shot in the studio, there was enough location shooting in Malaya and Australia to give it a feeling of authenticity.

It is a harrowing story with many heartbreaking scenes. It vividly captures the fall of empire as the Japanese supplant the British in Malaya, and humiliate them in front of their former colonial subjects. The scenes of the women and children trudging along holding their meagre possessions or the little girl looking back as she leaves a beloved rocking horse show their comfortable lifestyles torn asunder.

Jean Paget emerges as one of the strong characters of the group. This is such a truthful performance by Virginia McKenna who looks beautiful even though she is covered in sweat and dirt for much of the film.

The story is fictional. It is based on Neville Shute's novel, which he based on the plight of a group of Dutch women in similar circumstances in Sumatra. However, it is possible they didn't actually have to walk everywhere. In that case does the film slander the Japanese?

Fresh in people's minds when the film came out, was the knowledge that the Japanese had carried out a number of death marches in the Philippines and Borneo as well as atrocities on the Thailand-Burma Railroad. Japanese troops had also been involved in the massacre of prisoners of war, nurses and tens of thousands of Chinese civilians in Singapore and elsewhere.

The events in "A Town Like Alice" may be fictionalised but they fit the modus operandi. The militaristic Japanese regime of the time looked with contempt on people who surrendered in war, and this often manifested itself in cruel treatment.

Although the Australian-made mini-series with the charismatic Bryan Brown and luminous Helen Morse brought more of the book to the screen, I don't think it diminishes this version at all - it is still unforgettable.

I have just posted a comment on "Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence" directed by Nagisa Oshima in the early 1980s. The main originality of MCML does not lie in its subject, as other films have dealt with Prisoner-of-War camps under the Japanese rule, the most famous of them remaining "The Bridge on the River Kwai" by David Lean (1957). As MCML is a much more recent film, it might be considered as a more realistic approach to the daily life in a camp under such circumstances; yet realistic films on this subject appeared as early as in the 1950s with works like "A Town like Alice" directed by Jack Lee, which was rejected in its time by the Cannes Film Festival for its shocking content and violence — a sharp contrast with often romanticized productions where war has a glamorous aspect. "A Town like Alice" is also original for it tells war from the point of view of women, and women in conflicts are often ignored by war movies.

It has been years now since I watched "A Town like Alice". I remember it as a good and honest film about the conflict with the Japanese in the Far East. Virginia McKenna as a British nurse and Peter Finch were both convincing. It may be not the best film on WWII, yet it has an authenticity and favors a psychological and realistic approach to the characters than can attract many viewers, not just war movies freaks.

By the way, the title is a reference to the town of Alice Springs, where the story ends.

This film is in the same league as the series Tenko for it's realism. I have also watched the mini series which could have it's moments too but the film wins because of the fact that it was made around a decade after it had happened, when things must have been quite fresh in everyones minds. These women were taken captive as the men were but they were not wanted by anyone. These women were far away from home with no clothes apart from what they stood up in, no money and they didn't speak the language. Given those fact the thoughts are so scary!