Three Came Home

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Three Came Home
DVD cover
Directed by	Jean Negulesco
Produced by	Nunnally Johnson
Written by	Nunnally Johnson (Agnes Newton Keith, autobiography)
Starring	Claudette Colbert Patric Knowles Sessue Hayakawa
Music by	Hugo Friedhofer
Cinematography	William H. Daniels Milton R. Krasner
Editing by	Dorothy Spencer
Distributed by	Twentieth Century-Fox
Release date(s)	20 February 1950
Running time	106 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Three Came Home is a 1950 wartime film based on the memoirs of the same name by writer Agnes Newton Keith. It depicts Keith's attempt to flee Borneo during the Japanese invasion in 1942, her subsequent internment and suffering, separated from her husband, and with a young son to care for.

Adapted and produced by Nunnally Johnson, directed by the Romanian-born American film director Jean Negulesco, the film starred Claudette Colbert in the lead role. The New York Times reviewer said, "It will shock you, disturb you, tear your heart out. But it will fill you fully with a great respect for a heroic soul."

[edit] Plot outline

American-born Agnes Keith (Colbert) and her British husband (Patric Knowles) attempt to flee Borneo with their young son in the wake of the Japanese invasion. They are interned and then taken to separate prison camps, one for men, the other for women and children. Amid the brutality of the internment camp, the camp commander Colonel Suga (played by Sessue Hayakawa who in 1958 was nominated for an Oscar for a similar role in The Bridge on the River Kwai) is respectful to Mrs Keith because he is familiar with her work, and is shown to be kind to the children even when his own family has been destroyed by the American atom bombs.

[edit] References

Halliwell's Film Guide, 11th ed, 1995.

[edit] External links

• Variety review (extract from Variety's contemporary review of the film)
• New York Times Contemporary review of the film
• Time Contemporary review of the book