davidallen-84122

The majority of reviews are right on target in summing up this film as rather bland and disappointing by failing to deliver on it's initial promise.

Dana Andrews is usually worth watching but this time, he leaves us with very little to be impressed by which only makes his incessant smoking a very annoying prop. Joan Fontaine was also losing her way at this later stage of her distinguished film career and seems merely content with displaying a vast array of 1950's haute couture with every scene change but little concern for developing a convincing or interesting character.

I watched the film again last night, hoping to retrieve something worthwhile but all to no avail. I've decided to eliminate it from my collection.

This film has to be viewed as a strictly masochistic experience as we wallow in Karen Stone's fall from grace on her dangerous journey from the loneliness of grief to false hope to utter abandonment.

Even so, it's all dressed up in glamorous accoutrements and hypnotic theme music and an ageing but still attractive Vivien Leigh whose screen appearances had become so rare that fans would go to see her in anything.

I ask myself why I keep re-watching this far from salubrious film when I am always left with a feeling of emptiness. Could it be about an exercise in morbid self- analysis, something that Mrs. Stone herself was avoiding. I tend to think so.

Many years ago, after lending my video of the film to someone I hardly knew, he looked at me cynically and commented : "Your problem is, she had more money than you have".

Peter Finch would have to be my favourite film actor and my sole reason for watching most of his work. Therefore, while understanding all the favourable reviews of ''A Town Like Alice", Finch does not show up until well into the film and then only in snatches, as the poor female prisoners take precedence. We have two intimate scenes as he shares a cigarette and longing eye contact with the heroine and that's about it until the harrowing punishment scene when censorship demanded that the camera film away from Joe and focus on the shocked reaction of the male and female prisoners. Fast forward to the abrupt ending (no spoilers from me).