This P.O.W movie is unusual in that it's set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp that housed women and children on the island of Borneo and is based on a true story. It's directed, superbly, by Jean Negulesco and it may be his best and most under-valued film. What's most remarkable is that it treats the Japanese with a considerable degree of sympathy, certainly not as heroes but neither as the monsters of other similar pictures.
There are a number of superb sequences that build both character and real tension and even the clichés of the prison camp genre are very subtly subverted. It may be no masterpiece but it stands head and shoulders above many more famous films. First-rate performances, too, from Claudette Colbert in the central role of the sole American prisoner and from Sessue Hayakawa, as outstanding here as the camp commandant as he was in "The Bridge on the River Kwai".
There are a number of superb sequences that build both character and real tension and even the clichés of the prison camp genre are very subtly subverted. It may be no masterpiece but it stands head and shoulders above many more famous films. First-rate performances, too, from Claudette Colbert in the central role of the sole American prisoner and from Sessue Hayakawa, as outstanding here as the camp commandant as he was in "The Bridge on the River Kwai".