HotToastyRag Without Gregory Peck's wonderful acting—and handsomeness—The Purple Plain would be a pretty lousy movie. There's nothing particularly spectacular about the plot; it's a story of a shell-shocked pilot in WWII. There are a couple of tension-filled scenes where Greg and his fellow soldiers are up in their airplanes, but in general, the film felt like it didn't know what it wanted to be. Is it a romance, a war story, a survival adventure, or a racial lesson? There's a little of each element in the story, but not enough of the writing was invested to make any of them very believable. If you really love Gregory Peck, you can watch it, since he does do a very good job, putting extra nuances into his lines that other actors wouldn't. But if you're looking for a good war movie, this isn't it.DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie is not your friend. Gregory Peck has a flashback, and the camera gets a little fuzzy and shaky, so be on the lookout. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

SimonJack "The Purple Plain" is an excellent war drama set in Burma during World War II. This is not a combat action film. Very little of that occurs. Rather it is about a Canadian pilot serving in the RAF. Gregory Peck plays Squadron Leader Bill Forrester who seems driven to take on the enemy without regard for life and limb. Of course, there's more to the story than that. As the movie unfolds, we learn of his past and the circumstances that have led to his often careless actions as a squadron leader and de Havilland Mosquito pilot. This is an excellent film that looks at the effects of shock and stress on pilots. Peck starred in another film that included these subjects – "Twelve O'Clock High," in 1949. In this film, his redemption comes through friendships he initially avoids. Bernard Lee plays Doctor Harris who steers Forrester's attention toward the plight of Burmese war refugees at a nearby mission. Brenda de Banzie plays the English missioner running the refugee camp, Miss McNab. Win Min Than is the young Burmese woman, Anna, who helps McNab. She becomes a love interest who further helps draw Forrester out of his past. The final segment of this story is one of survival after Forrester's plane goes down with two other men on board. He must muster all his strength and stamina to ensure the survival of two of them. In this situation, Forrester's recovery is complete as his compassion and care for another person, his navigator, restore his will to live and survive. It's a wonderful story based on a novel by H.E. Bates, who served in Burma during the war. Bates had an unusual job of writing short stories about the people serving in the war for the people back home. His stories first were published in the British daily newspaper, the News Chronicle, where Bates used a pen name, "Flying Officer X." They were later published in book form. "The Purple Plain" was one of two stories he wrote about Burma. This film was shot in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). The countryside resembled Burma (now Myanmar). It does seem curious that much of the survival takes place across dry barren land, rather than in the thick jungles of Burma. There is such a drier highland in the SE Asian nation. As difficult as it was bearing the heat and dry to survive for days without water, one can imagine it would have been much more difficult trying to traverse many miles of terrain through thick jungle forests and undergrowth. This is an interesting and enjoyable war drama film.

anordall Convincingly done, above all. We can believe the characters, they are real and moving. This movie is "British to the marrow" (thanks, Ringo Starr), and is an astonishing feat of Parrish, an American, that he has been able to so beautifully direct it so as to capture the British/colonial spirit of the story (the same for the acting of American star Gregory Peck). Only those addict to modern-day violent "action" movies will find this movie slow-paced; it goes exactly at the pace it should go. The cinematography is GREAT, so is the acting and the correctness of the technical details, only that I don't believe AT-6s were employed by the Southeast Asia Command; also, the crew of the crashed plane doesn't seem to have received a reasonable training on jungle survival. Peck is a handsome hero, but also humane and fragile; the final scene, when he lies down on the bed alongside the sleeping girl and also falls asleep is deeply touching!

jacegaffney There's hardly an actor of Hollywood's golden age - short of Jimmy Stewart - with more good will on his side than the glowingly decent, lethally handsome, stunningly stalwart Gregory Peck. Unfortunately, as I think this month's TCM bears out, the overpoweringly redoubtableness of his nature produced very few interesting movies. One striking exception however is the British produced THE PURPLE PLAIN of 1954. Here is the one Peck picture whose residual effect is different from all the others. The story adapted by Eric Ambler of an H.E. Bates novel is about a nerve-wracked, embittered, R.A.F. pilot reassigned to a Burmese mission in the war for reevaluation. During this time, he is restored somewhat to humanity through the good offices of a brilliant and good doctor (Bernard Lee), a spiritual lady (Brenda de Banzie) and most importantly, a lovely young Burmese nurse who works with the doctor at the hospital. Peck's character is called Forrester and the pivotal action of the movie is when he crashes a plane behind enemy Japanese lines. Two men are with him in the disaster. One is a dour medic named Blore (Maurice Denham) whom Forrester loses and another is a young navigator whom he bravely rescues along with himself. On the face of it all this conforms to the image of Peck the perfect. But just beneath the surface of the narrative resides the fairy tale of a man who loses his first love in an air raid in England (which he witnesses helplessly) and then has it restored to him through his meeting with the Burmese girl. Nothing could sound more corny but the treatment is anything but. The very last moments of THE PURPLE PLAIN are so perfectly judged, so uncannily rendered in their strangely erotic sense of deliverance that they take one's breath away. The "coming home" feeling of surrender at the end pulls one up short in a beautiful way that has to be experienced by the true lover of cinema - not laboriously described. With a haunting film score by John Veale, this is a most unusual production that deserves searching out. It doesn't deserve to be played at 3 in the morning but that's par for the course for pictures of this nature. It might be what contributes to their cult although THE PURPLE PLAIN isn't quite there yet as a cult item. It should be.