It's often interesting to read comments that are clearly written in haste and not checked before they are posted. For example one comment on this film says it's almost in the same league as Tenko, the author clearly not aware that the BBC television series Tenko, which aired a good two decades after the film, was inspired by the film - and arguably the best selling novel by Nevil Shute on which the film was based. A separate reviewer describes the main protagonist, Jean Paget, as a nurse when we are clearly shown in the initial 'flashback' scene that she is, in fact, a secretary in an office in Kuala Lampur. Virginia McKenna has all the 'English Rose' masking an steely inner core quality that the role requires and it's difficult if not impossible to imagine any other actress of the time inhabiting the role so well - McKenna of course made something of a specialty of world war two heroines and this performance is only a whisker behind her outstanding portrayal of Violette Szabo in Carve Her Name With Pride. Peter Finch, as a native Australian, acting in England less than a decade, was also perfect casting for Joe Harman but as someone has already pointed out, the main thrust of the book was how Jean Paget, receiving a substantial legacy after the war, was inspired to 1) build a well for the Malayan village who had taken her and the rapidly diminishing number of technical prisoners of war, and allowed them to see out the war there working alongside their own women, and 2) create a town in the Australian outback to rival the idealized memory of Alice Springs that Joe had spoken about during the war. It's a fine novel, Shute interviewed at length a woman who had endured such a journey, but as a Master storyteller he blended fact with fiction and there is one notable emission in the film that was crucial to the novel: By the time she first encountered Joe, who was underneath his lorry, she had long abandoned her 'Western' garb for the single, wraparound garment worn by the native women. Joe has only ever seen her clad that way so that when they finally do meet after the war there is a palpable uneasiness between them until Jean realizes what the problem is and exchanges her 'Western' clothes for the wraparound garment. In the film - which makes no reference to Jean creating a virtual town - he steps off the plane, sees her in the waiting room and they fall into an embrace. Despite these cavils it remains a fine film, worth two hours of anyone's time.
Review of A Town Like Alice
