Adam’s Woman *** (1970, Beau Bridges, Jane Merrow, James Booth, John Mills) – Classic Movie Review 12,198

Jane Merrow is Adam’s Woman. The 1970 Australian Victorian period drama film also stars Beau Bridges as convict Adam.

Director Philip Leacock’s very watchable and attractively offbeat 1970 Australian Victorian period drama film Adam’s Woman stars Beau Bridges, Jane Merrow, James Booth and John Mills.

Beau Bridges plays the unjustly incarcerated young American sailor Adam, who is wrongly sentenced to 20 years in a convict settlement in Australia as an accomplice to murder on shore leave in Liverpool. He suffers in an Aussie prison colony and plots to escape with co-convict Dyson (James Booth).

But then reformist colony governor, Sir Philip MacDonald (John Mills), lets Adam marry young Irish woman Bess (Jane Merrow) and they start a new life smallholding, enduring the hardships of the land in the Australian Outback.

Adam’s Woman (1970, Jane Merrow, John Mills).

Capably and sensitively made in 1970 by Philip Leacock, the film has a thoughtful screenplay by Richard Fielder (based on a story by Lowell Barrington) that periodically gets bogged down and stalls, but its best parts are really rather good. It is very nicely performed by the excellent cast. Old Oz looks eye-catching under Wilmer C Butler’s cinematography.

It was distributed by Warner Bros in Australia and the US, but the UK distributors EMI had no faith in it and quietly shelved it.

It was released on the Warner Archive Collection on DVD in the US.

Also in the cast are Andrew Keir, Tracy Reed, John Warwick, Peter O’Shaughnessy, Katy Wild, Harry Lawrence, and Mark McManus.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,198

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