Film review: The Railway Children (1970)

 

This, of course, was a childhood favorite of everyone from my generation (or at least the sensitive types who went on to form indie bands in the 80s) and as it's leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month I wanted to catch it.  I gave Jami the choice of this or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which I have somehow never seen, also leaving) which I thought gave her a range of options.  She was not enthused about either but this was the lesser of two evils, apparently.  I am happy to report that it remains completely charming, and that now I am over my childhood crush on Jenny Agutter I can appreciate that she was a remarkable child (well, she was 18, and alas (given that she's playing someone around 15 at a guess) looks it) actor.  She manages to be completely sincere and totally convincing, and at the same time underplays things wonderfully.  Somehow she can say dialogue that includes words like "horrid" and "Mummy" and not be cringeworthy.  I found that I didn't remember all that much about it, apart from a couple of key scenes (using the petticoats as flags to stop the train so it doesn't hit a landslide, the boy having an accident when running in the train tunnel).  It also became apparent how episodic it is: the source book must be a series of self-contained chapter stories, as this is how the film is.  I'd somehow forgotten the father being arrested at the beginning of the film, the event that upends their comfortable middle-class life, 

presaging a visit from a very disagreeable aunt from India, followed by the dismissal of one nice maid and one harridan and then decamping to the wilds of Yorkshire (to a house that is supposed to be a huge step down but of course would probably sell for a couple of million today).  And of course I didn't know that the beloved father was played by the man who would later play one of the most sinister figures ever in children's television...  Anyway, here are the major events of the film, once they get to Yorkshire.  The mother, who supports the family by writing stories (was this a self-reference by E. Nesbit?), falls sick and the children worry about starving, so they recruit help from the nice old gentleman who's been waving to them every day from one of the trains, 

and he sends them a hamper, which enrages the normally mild-mannered mother (showing a horror of charity mirrored by Bernard Cribbins's Perks later), the trees on the hill by the track start to move apparently magically, but in fact because of a landslide, and the children save the train as described above (before Agutter's Bobbie faints), 

a man arrives on a train while the children are waiting for their mother to return, and collapses, and nobody can understand him, although he speaks some French, and then it is discovered he is a famous Russian dissident writer who has escaped Siberia and is trying to find the wife and children that preceded him to England.  He is nursed back to health 

and the same kindly old gentleman finds the family for him.  The children watch a paperchase that leads the local grammar school boys through a train tunnel, only the last boy doesn't come out, and the children (who have to cower against the sides of the tunnel as the train goes through) find that he has broken a leg, and he is nursed back to health.  It turns out (small world!) that he is the kindly gentleman's grandson!  He eventually leaves, and Bobbie runs after the train while the other two comment that "she'll have to marry him now."  Bobbie has a birthday.  The children discover that Bert Perks, the man who looks after the small local station, has a birthday coming up but that he never celebrates his birthday, so they go round the village collecting presents for him, along with notes from the townspeople (except Pone shopowner who says he "hates the man") saying how they respect and appreciate him, but it backfires (at first) because he thinks it's charity and that everyone in the town thinks he's poor.  But once Bobbie reads out the notes 

(and says that she's never felt so rotten in her life, given his outburst, he of course softens, and all is well.  It ends with him getting birthday nookie from his wife (if you don't believe me, watch the film!).  Bert donating magazines and newspapers to the children and Bobbie finding out where her father is from the article on the front page of the newspaper wrapping the bundle (serving five years on accusations of spying!) And of course, the denouement of the film, which I also remembered, of Bobbie somehow getting an intuition that something was about to happen and going to the station and her father emerging from the steam on the platform.  If your eyes don't moisten at that (I'm looking at you, Jami!) then you are hard-hearted indeed.
As I said, Agutter is marvelous, although she looks too old.  Ironically (I know that's not the right word, but you know what I mean), her supposedly younger sister Phyllis is played by Sally Thomsett, who was actually 20 at the time (and apparently had to be forbidden from driving around, smoking and snogging her boyfriend while filming), even though she really could pass for 11.  Rounding out the siblings is Peter, who is perfectly fine, although he also looks a couple of years older than he should.  Given that the children are very child-like, seriously believing in magic and the like and playing very young games, the fact that they look like an assortment of teens rather strains credulity.  However, their performances are unaffected enough that they can get away with it for the most part.  And the adults are a set of old pros, although the village doctor does come across a bit pervy with the way he treats Bobbie, which perhaps wouldn't seem as odd if she were pre-pubescent instead of pushing 20.  Still, as I said, charming.  And it may be the best thing Bernard Cribbins has done, as he reins in his occasional treacliness/mugging and underplays it nicely.  I can't imagine it being made today - for one thing, apart from the whole father-in-the-slammer subplot, the incidents are pretty small-stakes, at least, for today's youth, and for another, it is very leisurely paced (I can hear Jami snorting at that adverb), which bothered me not a jot, but then again, I am very biased.