THREE CAME HOME Movie Review

1950 Jean Negulesco

This fact-based story of imprisonment by the Japanese takes a rarely seen perspective on its subject—the main characters are women—and it attempts to be even handed. It also features two excellent performances. But more recent similar films have been grittier, and younger audiences may find the emotions overstated.

Agnes Keith (Claudette Colbert) is the wife of a government official in Sandakan, Borneo, when the Japanese invade in early 1942. The commander, Col. Suga (Sessue Hayakawa), makes it clear that, as he sees it, the lines between civilian and military are blurred. The British have ordered their people to resist passively but the authorities have wrecked machinery and burned fuel oil and gasoline. In short order, all Westerners are ordered to prison camps. Agnes and her young son George (Mark Keuning) will go to one camp, her husband Harry (Patric Knowles) to another.

But Col. Suga is a fan of Agnes's book about Borneo, The Land Below the Wind. He is particularly taken by her perceptive portrayal of the Japanese. Col. Suga is not the monster many had feared, and he is in charge of all of the prison camps. Though she and her family get no special treatment, acts of violence do occur.

Most of the action is set in the various compounds where Agnes and George are sent, and though the film was made on location, the camps do not seem as unpleasant as doubtless they were. That, however, is simply a reflection of the cinematic style of the time. The same criticism could be leveled at Bridge on the River Kwai, and to leave it at that misses the larger point. Three Came Home does capture the emotions of captivity. In its depiction of prison-camp life, it does not portray the guards and officers as particularly evil or depraved, focusing more on the brutality of war than on the brutality of the Japanese.

Two other important scenes—the arrival of a group of male Australian prisoners and the conclusion—will also strike some contemporary viewers as too dated and overtly sentimental to be believed, but both manage to redeem themselves. In the same way, the more important conclusion between Agnes and Col. Suga has one predictable element that slightly undercuts the genuine emotional connection that exists between them. It is a comparatively minor flaw. Throughout, Claudette Colbert and Sessue Hayakawa do excellent work, and they make the scene believable and touching.

This kind of story is so seldom told from a woman's point of view that Three Came Home is well worth watching. The book is excellent, too.

Cast: Claudette Colbert (Agnes Keith), Patric Knowles (Harry Keith), Sessue Hayakawa (Col. Suga), Florence Desmond (Betty Sommers), Sylvia Andrew (Henrietta), Mark Keuning (George), Phyllis Morris (Sister Rose), Howard Chuman (Lt. Nekata); Written by: Nunnally Johnson; Cinematography by: William H. Daniels, Milton Krasner; Music by: Hugo Friedhofer. Producer: Nunnally Johnson, 20th Century-Fox. Running Time: 106 minutes. Format: VHS.