Large portions of this old road has since been renamed or realigned, following the building of the Pan-Island Expressway or PIE (1964-1981) and the various new housing towns adjacent to it (Bukit Batok, Jurong East, Jurong West). It is probably constructed in the middle of the 19 th century, and provided a link between the Singapore town and harbour in the south to the rural and largely uninhabited western reaches of the island. The Jurong Road is one of the earliest roads to be laid down in the western part of Singapore. (We guess that the spot from where the scene was filmed could be around a road-bend next to a ditch, somewhere after Track 22, if one is traveling westwards.) It was reported that the scene of the deserted road where Jean’s escape vehicle breaks down, was shot along Jurong Road 11 th milestone. In Singapore, they took their film cameras and doubles to Jurong Road, Tanjong Kling (the kampong and police station), Tampines Road and “an estate near Seletar”. From the press reports, we found out that besides Singapore, the crew had also traveled to Johor Bahru and Penang. The local newspapers of the time had followed closely the “second-unit” production of A Town Like Alice in Malaya during the later half of 1955. The mid-shots and close-ups of the leading and main actors (it was too costly to fly the whole lot of them to Malaya/Singapore) were mostly filmed in Pinewood and its vicinity. So, he set up a second filming unit that headed to Malaya/Singapore and Australia’s Alice Springs to capture the wide and background shots, auditioning local double actors to appear in them. He thought it might add a little more authenticity to the film if some scenes were shot on location in the places depicted in the novel. Jack Lee the director of A Town Like Alice, in preparing for the film shoot, had decided that he didn’t want the entire movie to be filmed in England’s Pinewood film studios.
A lasting bond developed between Jean and Joe, one that would drive their motivations during the occupation and beyond after the war. During their march, the struggling and starving women and children came across Joe Harman, an Australian prisoner of war (Peter Finch), who took risks to help them survive the ordeal. The film centers on Jean Paget (Virginia McKenna), a courageous female captive who spurred her companions on even when they were forced by the Japanese to march for long distances all over Malaya, in search of a kampong (village) or prisoner camp that would take them in. Tanjong Kling Police Station, Kampong Tanjong KlingīASED ON NEVIL SHUTE’S BEST-SELLING NOVEL, A Town Like Alice portrays the tragic consequences encountered by a group of British women who did not manage to evacuate from colonial Malaya at the outbreak of the Japanese invasion during World War Two.
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