Film

The Railway Children (1970)

Director: Lionel Jeffries

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Jeffries displays miraculous tact in adapting E Nesbit's children's classic as an affectionate homage to those golden Edwardian days when God was in his heaven and all right with the world. Christmas festivities are under way at a cosy suburban home when Father (Cuthbertson) is spirited away by two suspiciously flat-footed visitors; it's all right really, of course, but meanwhile, Mother (Sheridan) and her three children are exiled to genteel poverty in a cottage on the Yorkshire moors. There the children take over, forming a secret pact with the railway which runs sleepily past the bottom of the garden, and responding gravely to wryly funny encounters with such characters as the portly businessman from the train (Mervyn) who is delighted to be adopted as 'the nicest old gentleman we know', or the stationmaster (Cribbins) who never quite manages to shed his air of stuffy resentment while becoming their best friend. Events are not lacking - mother falls ill, they save the train from derailment, they harbour an unhappy Bolshevik refugee - but above all the film perfectly captures the timeless, magical world of childhood where grief, joy and adventure are solemn, entirely personal affairs, quite unexplainable to adults. It is...almost...another Meet Me in St Louis

---

• 
•