A Town Like Alice (1956)

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Strange that I never saw this before today on TCM. I mentioned Tenko in headline because there is a great deal of similarity between the two. The women of Tenko, the television series and this movie bear some similarities. Tenko has a better chance to flesh out the women and their captors. The men are not so much a part of the movie but appear occasionally, as do the children and natives. This is a decent film but I prefer Tenko if you have the time.

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 ti to India. They apparently died of exhaustionA 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. The film company 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.

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.

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.