A Town Like Alice (1956) - film review

In 1942, Jean Paget is working in Malaya when the Japanese army begins to attack the country.  In no time, she ends up with a party of women and children who are instructed to walk fifty miles to Kuala Lumpur, where they will be allowed to leave the country for Singapore.  Before they reach their destination, the party is halted by more Japanese soldiers and sent in another direction.  Over the next few months, the women and children walk for hundreds of miles through jungles and across swamps, barely surviving on the scraps of food they can find.  Their only hope of survival is to find a prisoner-of-war camp that will take them in and give them food and medical attention, but at every camp they come to they are turned away.  For many in the party, the ordeal is too much.  With half of the women and children dead from disease or malnutrition, Jean and her surviving friends wonder how long it will be before they too will die.  Just when everything seems hopeless, the party runs into an Australian prisoner-of-war, Joe Harman, who offers what little help and moral support he can.  But when Joe steals a chicken for the women from his camp commander, the Japanese soldiers are quick to exact their revenge.  Nailed to a tree, Joe is left for dead.  More distraught than ever, the women continue their seemingly endless trek across Malaya...

Jack Lee’s superlative adaptation of Nevil Shute’s celebrated novel, which is based on actual events during WWII, offers Virginia McKenna one of her most memorable roles in what is one of British cinema’s most harrowing wartime dramas.  With its brutally authentic depiction of suffering, A Town Like Alice is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and tells a story of courage and cruelty that both chills the blood and moves the heart. 

As the stiff-upper-lipped heroine who is visibly struggling to keep her emotions in check, Virginia McKenna provides the film with its emotional heart and vividly conveys the experience of almost intolerable human anguish.   This was an actress who had a knack for playing ordinary women with extraordinary qualities and here, in what is undoubtedly one of her finest performances, she brings a searing realism  to a film that could so easily have slipped into overcooked melodrama. 

McKenna’s co-star, Peter Finch, deserves almost equal praise for his convincing portrayal of a prisoner-of-war with a subtle poetic streak, and the contributions from the capable supporting cast should not be overlooked.  A Town Like Alice is a film that tells a remarkable story with a pleasing simplicity and charm, without the extravagance we would find in a comparable Hollywood production.  The ending may feel somewhat contrived but it provides just the tonic the spectator needs after witnessing the litany of horrors that preceded it. A very poignant film.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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