A Town Like Alice (1956 film) A Town Like Alice (1956 film) A Town Like Alice is a 1956 British drama film produced by Joseph Janni and starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch that is based on the eponymous 1950 novel by Nevil Shute. The film does not follow the whole novel, concluding at the end of Part Two and truncating or omitting much detail. It was partially filmed in Malaya and Australia. In post-Second World War London, a young woman, Jean Paget, is informed by solicitor Noel Strachan that she has a large inheritance. Asked what she wants to do, Jean decides to travel to
A Town Like Alice by the Japanese did indeed take place during World War II, but the women in question were Dutch, not British as in the novel, and the march was in Sumatra, not Malaya. Jean Paget was based on Carry Geysel (Mrs J. G. Geysel-Vonck), whom Shute met while visiting Sumatra in 1949. Geysel had been one of a group of about 80 Dutch civilians taken prisoner by Japanese forces at Padang, in the Dutch East Indies in 1942. Shute's understanding was that the women were forced to march around Sumatra for two-and-a-half years, covering , with fewer than 30 people surviving