A Town Like Alice

I think this is one of the best miniseries around if you are at all attracted to love stories, the absurdities of war, and the gain and loss of love. This miniseries also gives you an excellent picture of life in the very small, very rural towns in the outback of Australia.

Highly recommended; if you haven't seen this one, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Helen Morse is excellent in this feature, and Bryan Brown really does a turn with a taciturn cattle rancher.


GREAT LOVE STORY OF THE CENTURY   June 15, 2000
31 out of 31 found this review helpful

This is a movie to be viewed time and again. It encompasses several different cultures and spans several continents.

It is a love story that survives not only the nastiness of war but the trials of separation and the very unforgiving climate of Australia's outback.

When Jean and Joe, played admirably by Helen Morse and Bryan Brown, first meet, it is in the very trying conditions of war. After a separation of several years, they are reunited only to have their love tested again by the conditions of the land around them.

This movie was a TV mini-series based on Neville Shute's book and is quite long. However, it is worth it and I have watched it many, many times and never tire of it.

Beautiful scenery and great acting by everyone, especially Brown and Morse make this a thoroughly enjoyable must see movie.


Poor video quallity   April 7, 2000
23 out of 25 found this review helpful

While the content of this film is excellent, my comments are directed to the quality of this video. It appears that the entire miniseries was recorded in super long play, cramming 6 hours of play on a 2 hour tape. As a result the picture and sound quality is extremely poor. Beware.


The best movie, the sweetest story that nobody ever heard of   June 23, 2001
Doug Briggs (Houston, TX USA)
20 out of 20 found this review helpful

Maybe it's the distance from Hollywood that allowed the movie-making industry in Australia to grow up on its own feet, making movie after movie that smolders satisfyingly in our minds long after they are over. This one is as good as a movie needs to be.

It was a lucky stroke that it was a Mobil Masterpiece Theater TV mini-series, for a film five hours long, however good, would not work in a theater. But it worked for me, and I hated to see it come to an end. The second viewing was even better.

Nevil Shute, author of many fine stories, including "On the Beach," would have been proud of this production so faithful to his epic story, and populated with Shute's own characters right down to the smallest detail. Every aspect of movie making shines here: a perfect and incredibly talented cast, fine direction, beautiful photography, splendid music. The dialog is exactly on the mark, and many a time an expression, a look, said everything without a word spoken.

The story begins as the Japanese are overrunning Maylasia early in WWII. A British community is taken, the men sent to prison camps, the women sent to . . . They didn't have a place for women prisoners, so Jean Paget and the other fifteen or so women and several children are marched from one Japanese-held place to another. It seems that the officers at each one, not knowing what to do with women and children, passed the problem by sending them off to yet another place, afoot. After walking some 300 miles over perhaps a good part of a year, during which half the women and some children died, providence and Jean Paget's resourcefulness lead them to a "home," an isolated village where they spend the remainder of the long war.

The story continues after the war, leading to a truly heartwarming romance. Not to mention some providential intervention that makes the romance work wonderfully. Never does the drama get sticky. There is a nice balance of conflict, but never melodramatic overt conflict.

The Aussies are renowned for the fine horses in their movies, always ridden with evident skill, and they didn't disappoint here. The airplane scenes I particularly enjoyed, for their adherence to the period and the way they were handled. The Twin Beech's first landing was a grease-job, making me wonder how many times they had to shoot it. That was answered by the next landing – not nearly so slick but nevertheless okay in spite of the bounce. We get to see the planes taxi in, where Hollywood would have shown the landing then cut to the opening door.

Joe Harmon's beat-up old pickup – it may have been a Studebaker – made me smile. He always had to open the door with the outside handle, and it drooping at half mast.

Sadly, I have not encountered a soul who has seen "A Town Like Alice," before I introduced them to it. The accolades have created a waiting list and a one-week time limit on borrowers. Buy it, I know you will love it. And you'll bring enjoyment to those you lend it to. A word of caution: put a time limit on borrowers. Call them after a few days and nudge them into starting it. Otherwise, it may find a new home, as books and movies tend to do.

DANGER! This is a three-tape package starring Helen Morse as Jean Padget and Bryan Brown as Joe Harmon. Don't fall for the video of the same title with a different illustration on the jacket. It's a 60-minute production by someone else. May not even be the same story.

I wish ... would do a favor to the masses who enjoy truly good movies by putting this one on their feature page. It cries out for some exposure.