Ma vie commence en Malaisie

I have the video of this movie which I got a few years back. I wish they would bring this movie out on DVD. Its wonderfully acted. Hard to believe this was based on a true story. I can't believe these women marched hundreds of miles, having nothing to eat much of the time and some of their companions dying along the way. They must have been a hardy bunch. Its too bad more people couldn't see this movie. Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch were excellent as the main characters and the rest of the supporting cast were very good too. I'm glad to have the video, but would very much like to see a DVD come out on it. The movie is in black and white but this in no way detracts from the story or the acting.

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.

I remember my mother and my aunt watching this film when I was a little boy late once night when it came on television.

They seemed to have cried most of the way through the film. This is an image that sticks in my mind whenever this film is mentioned.

Years later my mother told me how she lost some relatives in the second world war as they tried to escape from the Japanese in Burma by trying to walk it to India. They apparently died of exhaustion

A Town Like Alice adapted from the novel by Nevile Shute looks at a group of women as they shuffle from one Japanese camp to another during occupied Malaysia but no one would take them in. Slowly one by one they perish because of malnutrition, sickness, disease or exhaustion.

During their journey they are accompanied by an old guard who slowly comes to respect them.

During the journey Virginia McKenna meets Australian soldier Peter Finch also a prisoner of war but he does his best to help them out here and there and both fall for each other. However he faces severe punishment when he is found out for stealing some chickens.

The film is told in flashback as McKenna goes back to Malaysia after the war and discovers what happened to Finch.

This is a gritty and unromanticised view of life in occupied Far East, many years before films like Empire of the Sun. Also it is unusual for not being set in a prisoner of war camp, these people want to get there and stay there.

It was filmed in Malaysia and Australia for added authenticity.

Look out for Jean Anderson, many years later she appeared in the BBC television series Tenko which was also women held in a prisoner of war camp in Malaysia.

The Rank Organisation went whole hog in producing A Town Like Alice with location shooting in Malaya, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The results were well worth the effort and the film was a big boost to the careers of Peter Finch and Virginia McKenna. In fact as Finch was becoming more and more an international star he would get fewer roles like this one, playing a native Australian.

I was expecting when deciding to view this film that it would be similar in nature to the American film Three Came Home that starred Claudette Colbert as a woman prisoner of the Japanese in World War II. The woman prisoners were segregated, but quickly housed and fended for themselves as best they could, but in a static setting.

When the male prisoners are separated from the females after the fall of Malaya, these woman are put under guard and just sent around like vagabonds with their children if they had them. Why they were selected for this rather special brand of torture we can speculate on end, but whatever the Japanese idea of chivalry was to the women, they couldn't just outright kill them. In fact none are during this film.

The film is seen through McKenna's eyes, she's working as a secretary in Kuala Lampur when the Japanese takeover. She takes over too as guardian of her boss's kids after their mother dies early on in the strange odyssey. Peter Finch plays an Australian soldier who with his mates they constantly run into and who offers them help when he can sneak food and medicine from the Japanese. He pays a heavy price for doing this when he's caught.

When he was killed by Irish Terrorists in 1979, it was learned that Lord Mountbatten had specifically requested that at his funeral no representation from the Japanese was to be permitted. As Supreme Commander of that theater Mountbatten remembered all the horror stories he heard from people survived Japanese internment, even the strange internment where apparently the whole country was their jail.

How McKenna and those that remained survived is quite a story, let's say it involved breaking a lot of cultural barriers to do it. One of the women who did it her own way was Maureen Swanson who after McKenna refuses his proposition, she takes up with a Japanese captain. Swanson is another you'll remember from A Town Like Alice.

Alice refers to Alice Springs in Northern Territory where Finch reminisces he'd like to return. It sounds like heaven, looks pretty good too after the years in Malaya. The film is a really good war film from the not often heard from point of view of woman prisoners.

Soon after the end of real hostilities in 1945, Hollywood produced the first of many subsequent films from the perspective of prisoners of war held by the Japanese: that film was Three Came Home (1950) with Claudette Colbert. I recall seeing that one a long time ago and recall the dark nature of that narrative (I have yet to submit a review here, but I will, in time).

A Town Like Alice is a different kettle of fish, so to speak: instead of a single family, it's a mix of various women and children caught up in the retreat to Singapore in 1941, and follows their seemingly unending trek across Malaya, from camp to camp, seeking admission and a final resting place to wait out the war.

The black and white photography is superb as the downtrodden party weaves its way through swamp, dirt roads, wet and dry season, very little food or water, malaria, dysentery and all other manner of tropical diseases. Little wonder that, as they walk, they also die, one at a time, from malnutrition and sickness, and all the while, their guard, an old-timer, gradually comes to admire their perseverance just as the women come to respect the old man's quiet determination to keep helping them to survive. That's the main story.

The big sub-plot is how Jean Paget (Virginia McKenna) meets Joe Harmon (Peter Finch), also a prisoner of war, and how they both come to fall in love – on the run, if you know what I mean: they keep meeting (he is pressed into service as a driver for the Japanese) at different parts of Malaya as the women keep wandering around, looking for a place to stay. So, there is a bit of comedy from the irrepressible Aussie soldiers, mixed with moments of real tension as the two lovers try to keep a relationship going under such conditions. And, it's during one of those meetings that Jean learns that Joe comes from Alice Springs.

Never boring, and with stand-out scenes, such as one of the little boys running in between the advancing Japanese soldiers with his toy gun, shouting "bang, bang" (reminiscent of Brandon de Wilde in Shane [1953], doing the same thing, and annoying Jean Arthur, inside the farm house); the joy of the women when they come across an abandoned house with hot running water; and, Jean's bargaining with a Malay shop-keeper for tinned milk for a baby.

If this period in history is of interest, you could do worse to spend two hours of your time. And, as for how the romance turns out, well, you'll just have to see the movie, won't you?