THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1996 Shane R. Burridge
The Railway Children (1970) 108m.
Heartwarming film written and directed by character actor Lionel Jeffries from E. Nesbitt's novel. It may remind you in spirit of Julio Cortazar's beautiful short story `The End of the Game'. Set at the turn of the century, story relates adventures of three Edwardian children who move to a country house in Yorkshire after their father is mysteriously taken away by police. As their mother refuses to inform the children of the exact nature of their circumstances, the country retreat, with its stone cottages and buttercup fields, becomes a kind of balmy, nostalgic limbo. It's an inbetween world where the children must while away the hours until their father's return - if, in fact, he will return. Reason this classic is so popular must surely be because of its prewar innocence that yet manages to capture elements of what it was like for urban and suburban Britons during the Blitz: there are children being relocated into the country by railway; a father absent from home on "government business"; a brave mother making do; a family playing at "being poor". This strong sense of reminiscence is established right from frame one - in the first few minutes of the film we see the camera pan lovingly over mementoes and trinkets; we see a photograph being taken, a Christmas dinner, a spinning zoetrope, a panto performance of Peter Pan - and while it is all rather sentimental, it never becomes mawkish.
It's wonderful how Jeffries creates an idyllic world that is entirely plausible, a world where strangers are kind and one good deed always deserves another. His splendid work is more than matched by a sterling cast. You'll really want to spend more time with these children and share their adventures - from the older sister Bobby (Jenny Agutter, who has as much poise at 16 in a middy blouse or a pinafore than she would as an adult), the younger sister Phyllis (A cheerful, brunette Sally Thomsett, who would later find fame as the dippy blonde Jo in the sitcom MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE, and was actually older than Agutter), and brother Peter (Gary Warren, who starred in the cult children's BBC serial CATWEAZLE). Their performances are matched equally by the adults Dinah Sheridan and most notably Bernard Cribbins as a humble-yet-proud stationmaster.
This film has such a generous, humane spirit to it that you may feel your eyes mist over during several occasions. The finale is a guaranteed tearjerker, but I always get a lump in my throat at the very end when Agutter softly tells the audience "Goodbye", knowing that she could not realize she was well on the way to becoming a celebrated and popular actress in the film industry. THE RAILWAY CHILDREN probably works even better now than it did then in 1970, as the nostalgia it evokes for those times works in tandem with the nostaliga of the story itself. They don't make films like this anymore. William Mervyn, as a train-travelling old gentlemen, sums it up in one word. "Charming....charming!" Footnote: Agutter, Thomsett, and their screen father Iain Cuthbertson were reunited a quarter-century later when the British Film Institute brought them back together to a cheering crowd at the Yorkshire Station, whereupon their film was commemorated with a special plaque.
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