A Town Like Alice

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 it to India. They apparently died of exhaustion

A 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.

It was 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.