VividSimon Simply Perfect

Steineded How sad is this?

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

jc-osms As my wife termed it, a perfect rainy Saturday movie. From the "kitchen-sink" genre of British film-making, famous for their black and white photography, contemporary, usually working-class settings, characters and dialogue, this appealing film differs from celebrated contemporaries like "A Taste Of Honey", "A Kind of Loving" and "Billy Liar", amongst many others by not being about avowedly adult themes. Instead we get a modern day fairy tale with three young, God-fearing Lancashire children improbably confusing an on the run murderer, secreting himself in their barn, for Jesus Christ.That's basically it for the plot, but helped by debut director Bryan Forbes' sure touch, amusing, vernacular dialogue from the celebrated Willis & Waterhouse team, sparkling music from Malcolm Arnold and some engaging acting, particularly from the three young principals, modern day cynicism is suspended into disbelief as you follow the movie through to its conclusion.The depiction of present-day Lancashire is brought home firmly with a combination of convincing exterior and interior sets and Forbes is smart enough to ground the picture firmly in its time with pop references in the background to stars of the day like Cliff Richard and Marilyn Monroe.Young Hayley Mills, Britain's then popular child-star, demonstrates her ease in front of the camera with a wholly natural performance, full of expression. However the two youngsters playing her kid sister and brother also shine in debut roles, with the Clitheroe-type little lad getting most of the best laugh-out-loud lines; funny as they are, he delivers them like a veteran. Of the adults, the late Alan Bates, as the villain, handles an awkward part deftly, as the horde of curious kids win him over with their adoration.One can delve deeper into the themes of the movie and see in it an allegory for the loss of innocence and a lament for the passing of Christianity in workaday England. The religious symbolism is inserted with restraint, just enough to keep the story going, without doing it to death. Its layers are certainly there for the perusal of film-students but its many charms will probably set aside more serious critical examination, especially if you're caught indoors of a wet Saturday and this delight is playing on the TV schedules.

rhoda-9 What creates the terribly poignant mood of this movie is the continuing contrasts between Christian teaching and acts, right from the beginning, when the little boy asks the Salvation Army lady if she will take care of the unwanted kitten. She fobs him off with "Jesus will look after it," which of course is worse than useless because it gives the child false hope and makes him feel that loving Jesus is useless too. Couldn't she have made SOME effort to find someone to care for the kitten instead of dispensing vapid promises of universal love? When Hayley Mills asks the Sunday-school teacher what would happen if Jesus came again, the teacher keeps avoiding the question and, when Mills asks, Would they do to him what they did before? is told, they might, because there are still bad people.As the film shows, the adult world is composed of some people who are bad and many others who are thoughtless and insensitive and have no trouble with saying one thing and doing another. They tell the children to be good but are themselves mean-spirited, harsh, and cruel, and would see no conflict between the two. The Hayley Mills character is so touching because she is just reaching the age at which children stop taking things literally and start turning into adults. We want her to believe that the murderer is Jesus, even though it is a lie, because the "real" world she lives in is so soulless.Perhaps the most troubling scene is the one in which the local bully, a boy not much older or bigger than the other children, knocks one little boy down and twists his arm while all the others stand and watch. Why do none of the others interfere? Just a few of them could overcome the bully. Hayley Mills arrives, and the bully hits her. She does not fight back, or even react--one must assume because she knows none of the others would help her. These children go to Sunday school, but they just watch, as if they had no sense of right and wrong, only the law of the jungle. They have, in a sense, become adults already--the ones we read about all the time who stand and watch someone being attacked and do nothing.

hugh1971 Once in a while you come across a film that is perfect - and this film is one of them. It has everything - humour, pathos, skilled acting, beautiful cinematography and it deals with the deepest questions of human existence. I found myself alternating between laughter and tears. It seems to touch on deep themes which films rarely dare to nowadays - themes of belief, faith, and the meaning of love.The photography of the bleak Lancashire countryside is superbly crisp, the facial expressions of the actors (especially Mr Bates) let us know exactly what is going on in their minds but subtly, in a way that is never seen nowadays in films where everything must be made explicit.The children interact entirely naturally and they are not merely credulous, but curious and questioning ('he's not Jesus, he's just some fella'). Some scenes are deeply moving, in particular when the children dance under a tree to the music of 'We Three Kings' in joy and praise at seeing what they believe to be their Saviour - seeming to sum up the deep, almost pagan connection between religion and the English countryside.The film deftly deals with the changing England of the time. By the early sixties, mainstream Christianity had begun to lose its hold on the English people (this was the time of Bishop Robinson and the 'Honest to God' debate); the decaying, plundered church is representative of the decline in organised religion, juxtaposed with the 'true' faith of the children. The religious figures, however, are not pilloried as would be the case in most modern films - they are treated sympathetically. I particularly liked the look of awkwardness on the Sunday school teacher's face when she is asked a question about Jesus which she knows she cannot answer with any honesty, and which she clumsily sidesteps.In many ways the film is an elegy for a lost England - an England where children roam the countryside freely, where the nearest telephone is half a mile away, and where children live in relative material poverty but with strong familial love, where the simple pleasures of life are enjoyed - playing in the open air, having a birthday party at home, or reading late into the night. The film could not realistically have been made even just ten years later.

animala "Whistle Down the Wind" is the story of young English children left on their own, their mother dead, their father a busy and distant farmer. Kathy (Hayley Mills) is the eldest of three. Adults in this movie have no time for joy, children, or mysticism. Life is utilitarian. The farmhand throws kittens in the river to drown—Kathy and co. save and hide the kittens in the barn. This sets up the important premise of the movie and maybe in what was a coming revolution in the 1960s—the unspoken battle between the idealistic youth and the unhearing/uncaring establishment.In this picture, the "establishment" are the adults. Resentment, no vision and platitudes are their way of greeting every event—and life seems to be unimportant in the wake of commerce. Maybe in the face of this cold void, the kids, especially Kathy are looking for some outlet—some warmth, some type of Messiah in their lonely world where they have love to give but no adult wants it.Enter the fugitive, "antiestablishment" Alan Bates. Dangerous looking, magnetic, countercultural—he becomes one of the living that Kathy wants to protect when she mistaken believes that he identifies himself as "Jesus Christ". The kids try to care for and hide the Second Coming as they believe Bates to be, from the adults who they perceive to have no hearts left. With deliberate ambiguity, the story explores issues of faith and doubt and really made me ask the question--Is the innocence of children to be cherished or dismissed as out of place with modern cynical society? This movie straddles a thin line of fantasy and gritty poetic realism that was prevalent in Black and white UK 60s cinema.I just loved it as a kid. The scene where "Jesus" is suffering, lying under the hay on the floor as he is stepped on in his concealment will always stay with me. Then when he is led away the way he raises his arms is as if it is a Crucifixion. My crap VHS copy fell apart so I hope it will be out on DVD in the US this side of 2010.