Review: A Town Like Alice


Set in WWII, Virginia McKenna is one of a group of women and children forced by the Japanese to march on foot to a prison camp in occupied Malaya. From there they are told there is no room and they must march on to the next camp, and then the next, and so on. Along the way McKenna strikes up a relationship with larrikin Aussie Peter Finch (who really was an Aussie, but has a barely adequate accent here, strangely), a fellow POW (given truck driving duties) who seems to make battling the elements (heat, famine, disease etc.) a little more tolerable, with stories of...well, look at the title.

 

Simple but generally watchable 1956 Jack Lee (“Robbery Under Arms”, “The Captain’s Table”) World War II POW film (somewhat based on fact, though the characters aren’t) needed to either beef up the relationship between McKenna and Finch, or excise it entirely. It’s an ill fit as is, though there are some strong moments here and there. Finch is particularly excellent and the film is quite grim for a film of this era, not necessarily a bad thing. Fans of this sort of thing will get a lot more out of it than perhaps I did, but it’s OK. The screenplay is by W.P. Lipscomb (“Pygmalion”, “Dunkirk”) and Richard Mason (“The Wind Cannot Read”), from the novel by Aussie Nevil Shute (“On the Beach”, “No Highway in the Sky”, turned into an eccentric Jimmy Stewart film).

 

Rating: C+

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