Rent Windom's Way (1957)

Messy account of colonial failure - Windom's Way review by TE

The setting for 'Windom's Way', the British exploitation of Malaya and the eventual revolution against it, is intrinsically interesting. However, the film doesn't do the subject matter justice. It comes across as hastily edited and uncertain as to where its sympathies lie.

Peter Finch's popular, liberal-minded doctor is caught between the pressures of Empire, local bureaucracy, aggressive British plantation owners, and the needs of the impoverished local population. He also has to contend with a brittle marriage and a friendship with a young worker who joins the communist rebels.

The doctor, like the film itself, ends up failing to negotiate a credible path through all of this.