A Town Like Alice (1956) on Netflix
Jean Paget is taken prisoner in Malaya when the Japanese invade, along with other British women and children. An Australian prisoner, Joe Harman, brings the marching women food and medicine.
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- IMDb7.2/102,190 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
In London after the war, a solicitor tells Jean Paget that she has come into a large inheritance, and she chooses to spend part of it on a well for a Malayan village where she once lived and worked. The story goes back to 1942, when Jean has an office job in Kuala Lumpur and the Japanese invade Malaya. She stays to help her employer's wife, Mrs. Holland, look after the three Holland children, and is taken prisoner. The male prisoners are sent to camps, while the Japanese find no place for the women and children, who walk from one village to the next in search of a ship to Singapore. On the road they meet Sergeant Joe Harman, an Australian prisoner who drives a Japanese truck; he steals petrol and trades it for medicine for them.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Town Like Alice (1956)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was withdrawn from the 1956 Cannes Film Festival over fears it would offend the Japanese. Peter Finch dismissed festivals as "just a joke - a film-selling 'racket'" that "serve no cultural purpose" and whose awards "don't mean a thing".
- In the United States, the film only opened in Los Angeles and Hartford, Connecticut, and performed so poorly there that distributors pulled it from release everywhere else in the country.
- Director Jack Lee devised an unusual production method: he cast British actors in the UK, fixed their exact clothing and way of walking, then found a matching "second cast" of Malayan actors so the two groups could be blended together on location.
- Director Jack Lee said reading the script "made me cry and I knew it would make audiences cry too," and the finished film stood out as one of the rare productions from the Rank Organisation of that era built around a female character.
