Watch A Town Like Alice For Free

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

From my favorite movies..

A Masterpiece!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same 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 the movies "Three Came Home" and "Paradise Road". Both are great movies but when I found this movie I knew I had found something special! I have watched it several times since I got it about two weeks ago and I can't seem to get enough of this movie. Peter Finch and Virginia McKenna are wonderful and the chemistry between them is amazing. We certainly did not treat the Japanese or any of our prisoners of war the way our ours ( English,American,or any of our Allies)were treated. I will not tell about the movie, everyone else has, but I can tell you to buy this movie. You will not regret it you'll be so glad you did. Whoever put this movie on DVD thank you, thank you!

Shown in flashback this film tells of the wartime experiences of Jean Paget, a young secretary working in Kuala Lumpur when the Japanese invaded Malaya. She flees south towards Singapore with her boss, his wife and their three children, one a babe in arms. They don't get very far before they are captured by the Japanese along with several other English families who were waiting for a boat. The men are taken into custody and the women are told that they must march fifty miles back to Kuala Lumpur where they will be put on a train south. When they get there, there is no train and they must walk south again; each time they get to were they have been told to go the Japanese tell them they can't stay there and must walk somewhere else. On one such walk they encounter a couple of Australian prisoners who have been forced to maintain and drive a lorry for their Japanese captors. Jean befriends one of them, Joe, and as they get to know one another he talks about the town he lives in; a small town near Alice Springs in the middle of Australia. As their treks continue people start to die; from exhaustion, from illness and even from a snake bite. Sometimes things look a bit better such as when Joe steals some chickens for the women; this only serves to lead up to a particularly gruelling punishment where the women are forced to watch as the Japanese crucify him.The way the film was shot let us know that Jean would survive the war but that didn't make the film any less gruelling; certain characters who one would expect to survive a film like this don't which comes as quite a shock. It was good to see that the Japanese weren't all depicted as monsters; the unnamed Sergeant was not unkind to them although the same cannot be said of Capt. Sagaya who was a brute. The environment they had to walk through was just as brutal with snakes, no clean water and malarial swamps to be crossed before they could get to safety. The beautiful Virginia McKenna does a fine job as Jean and Peter Finch is also good as the happy go lucky Joe. Thankfully after the long and arduous trek through the jungles of Malaya there is an upbeat ending which I won't spoil. This film is will worth watching for anybody interested on movies about the war; it is certainly different from most as there is no combat to speak of.

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?