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.
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.