The
Railway
Children
(aka THE SECRET ADVENTURES OF THE RAILWAY CHILDREN)
With: Dinah Sheridan (Mrs. Waterbury), Bernard Cribbins (Albert Perks), William Mervyn (Old Gentleman), Iain Cuthbertson (Charles Waterbury), Jenny Agutter (Bobbie Waterbury), Sally Thomsett (Phyllis Waterbury), Gary Warren (Peter Waterbury)
Plot Outline: In Victorian England, three children use their powers of love and faith to make a dream come true and rescue their father from injustice.
***
Wowee.
Once in a great while, a perfect film comes along. Here's one.
Rarely has a children's book been brought to life in such a stunning way. With Jeffrie's gentle direction and the enchanting charisma of Agutter, Thomsett and Warren, this is required viewing for all film lovers.
Although the story is old and the setting even older, this is a wholly modern film, using innovative techniques such as quick cutting, point-of-view camerawork, dramatic freeze-frame, exquisite telephoto landscape, and overlapping dialogue, in ways highly effective and virtually experimental.
In illustrating the mercurial, life-changing machinations of fickle fate, director Jeffries conveys Victorian England as a vital, dynamic place, in which our hero-children must eschew their passive upbringing and become pro-active to survive, challenging head-on what amounts to an all-out political conspiracy and an earth-shaking cultural revolution, played out in the guise of a generational turf war.
The kids learn that tragedy and upheaval can either be death, or an empowering new beginning, depending on your attitude and fortitude.
Adults are, by and large, either long-suffering martyrs or dangerous creeps. Kids, on the other hand, are bright, vital, essential to
evolution. And the promise of the ever-expanding future, symbolized by the lovely railroad trains that barrel by the kids' back yard, gives the kids firstly hope, then inspiration towards retrieving their persecuted father and restoring familial balance and harmony.
To us, the scene where little Jenny stops a ten-ton train with her little red flag, and then faints dead away, is one of the most excruciatingly erotic moments in all cinema.
The "Railway" children are incredible. The lovely Jenny Agutter, of course, went on to an absolutely fabulous career. The toothy Sally Thomsett had some rough times after this film before she went on to TV fame as one of the caustic bimbos in "Man About the House" the British sitcom that inspired the U.S. "Three's Company".
And little Gary Warren? Who knows?
Lionel Jeffries has had a long, distinguished career both as actor and director (although his follow-up film, THE AMAZING MR. BLUNDEN, went nowhere. Too bad; it's also delightful).
The Johnny Douglas score, released also on a now-rare soundtrack LP, is
exceptional. The theme song, "More Than Ever Now", even made a splash in the US as a Top 100 hit for Al Martino!
The parting shot is all-powerful, beautifully showing that faith begets magic, which begets community, which begets progress and reunion and happiness.
Wowee.
Video/DVD availability: VHS, DVD (Thorn/EMI)
(1970, U.K.) color 109/102 minutes
Anglo-EMI / EMI Films Ltd. / Universal Pictures
Story: E.E. Nesbit (from her novel)
Screenplay: Lionel Jeffries
Music: Johnny Douglas
Cinematography: Arthur Ibbetson
Produced by Robert Lynn
Directed by Lionel Jeffries
