The Purple Plain (1954)

Burma 1945 , after losing his fiancée in a Luftwaffe air raid, bomber pilot called Bill Forrester (Gregory Peck) turns into a lone killing machine, who doesn't care whether he dies in his dangerous dogfights . The nerve-shot and unsettling pilot is both admired and feared by the rest of his team . In Burma Squadron Leader Forrester falls in love for a young native named Anna (an alluring Win Min Than) . Later on , his plane has been downed in a spectacular crash sequence and Forrester attempting to get himself and his crew : a wounded navigator and an out-and-out coward partner named Blore (Maurice Denham) back to safety . Just before the crash Peck's navigator references "Where the dawn comes up like thunder", this is a quote from Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling ; in addition other quote from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Interesting as well as harrowing war movie set largely in the Burmese jungle . This exciting picture develops an agonising travel to hell when three survivors from a plane crash have to fight starvation, famine , thirst , elements and sun . Eric Ambler's plot rightly recreates the novel by H.E. Bates describing a survival drama and a love story . Very good acting by Gregory Peck as a reckless Canadian pilot who suffers nightmares from past . Excellent support cast provides nice acting such as Brenda de Banzie as Miss McNab , Bernard Lee as Dr. Harris and Anthony Bushell as Col Aldridge . Special mention to Maurice Denham , giving an awesomely fine performance as an unbalanced mind . Magnificent cinematography in brilliant Technicolor by Geoffrey Unsworth , being filmed on location in Elephant Pass, Sigiriya Rock, Sri Lanka and Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK . Thrilling as well as emotive musical score composed by John Veale , conducted by usual Muir Matheson .

The motion picture was well directed by Robert Parrish. Robert was an Academy Award-winning film editor who also realized and acted in movies . As an editor he won an Academy Award for Body and soul (1947), the 1947 Robert Rossen film that starred John Garfield as a money-grubbing, two-timing boxer on the make. Parrish also worked on All the King's Men (1949), an account of the rise and fall of a Louisiana politician that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Parrish then moved on to direct films during the 1950s and 1960s . Among his best received works was the brooding western ¨Saddle the Wind¨ (1958) , a Noir film titled ¨Cry danger¨, a Sci-Fi picture titled ¨Journey to the far side of the sun¨, a thriller titled ¨The Marseille Contract¨ and other strange Western called ¨A town called Bastard¨. And of course , ¨Purple plain¨ results to be one of the best films .

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