Three Came Home (1950)

Director:

Jean Negulesco

Writers:

Nunnally Johnson (screenplay)
Agnes Newton Keith (book)

Release Date:

20 February 1950 (USA)

Genre:

War | Drama

Tagline:

The story of one woman's confinement in a WW II Japanese prison camp

Plot:

The true story of Agnes Newton Keith's imprisonment in several Japanese prisoner-of-war camps from 1941 to the end of WWII...

Plot Keywords:

WWII | Japanese | Prisoner Of War | Drinking | Kiss

Cast

Claudette Colbert	...	Agnes Newton Keith
Patric Knowles	...	Harry Keith
Florence Desmond	...	Betty Sommers
Sessue Hayakawa	...	Colonel Suga
Sylvia Andrew	...	Henrietta
Mark Keuning	...	George Keith
Phyllis Morris	...	Sister Rose
Howard Chuman	...	Lieutenant Nekata

Runtime:

106 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Japanese

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #13819) | Finland:K-12 | Sweden:15 | UK:12 (video rating) (2004) | UK:A (original rating)

Filming Locations:

Sandakan, Sandakan Division, Sabah, Malaysia

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

It was while filming this movie that Claudette Colbert sustained the back injury that forced her to give up the part of Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) to Bette Davis.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Slanted Screen (2006)

Soundtrack:

They'll Be Coming up the River

Women POWS

Claudette Colbert got one of her best late career roles in Three Came Home, the moving story of the experiences of Agnes Newton Keith and her time in a Japanese POW camp. Keith earned her status by dint of being married to a British colonial official in North Borneo who is played by Patric Knowles in the best stiff upper lip tradition.

On the screen and in real life Keith was a novelist who faithfully recorded oriental life with some empathy in her books. That got her some favorable treatment from the Japanese, in the film in the form of an ally of sorts in a colonel played by Sessue Hayakawa.

Hayakawa's performance is the highlight of the film. It may very well have been the first time post World War II that a Japanese character was given three dimensions. Of course the brutality of the Japanese prison camps is also shown in the best tradition of that other World War II film Sessue Hayakawa did, The Bridge On The River Kwai.

1950 was definitely the year for women in stir. A few weeks before this film came out, MGM released Caged which certainly has some of the same themes as Three Came Home. Of course the big difference is that over at MGM the women were criminals in a civilian setting.

Three Came Home directed by Jean Negulesco who normally did lighter material than this, holds up very well for today's audience. Colbert, Knowles, and Hayakawa do some of their best screen work here and definitely try to catch this one when broadcast.