Diagonaldi Very well executed

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Hotwok2013 Based on the book by Edith Nesbit & the directorial debut of Lionel Jeffries, "The Railway Children" is a movie of immense charm. After the arrest & imprisonment of their father on charges of spying, a middle-class mother, (played by Dinah Sheridan), & her three children are forced to move to humbler surroundings. The Waterbury family move to a cottage in the Yorkshire Dales close to a railway which the three children Bobbie (Jenny Agutter), Phyllis (Sally Thomsett) & Peter (Gary Warren) frequently visit most days. They befriend the local station porter Mr. Perks (Bernard Cribbins) & an "old gentleman" passenger (William Mervyn). The latter helps to secure the eventual release of the children's father from his incarceration. Towards the films end when the father (Iain Cuthbertson) travels to Yorkshire to be re-united with his family, we witness what is probably the most moving "tear-jerking" scene in movie history. His eldest daughter Bobbie awaits at the station uncertain as to what is about to happen. Her father alights from a train in thick smoke from the steam engine. As the smoke clears & Bobbie slowly realises who it is standing on the platform she runs toward him & shouts "Daddy, my daddy". I must have seen this scene 20 times & it still brings moisture to my eyes. Jenny Agutter many years later narrated a documentary on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway at Howarth in Yorkshire where the movie's railway scenes were filmed. We learnt from the people in charge of its preservation that this movie was the single biggest shot in the arm for tourism that it has ever had in its short history!.

James Hitchcock During the Edwardian era Charles Waterbury, a senior official at the Foreign Office, is wrongly accused of selling state secrets to the Russians and imprisoned. His wife and three teenage children Roberta ("Bobbie"), Peter and Phyllis are forced to leave their luxurious London home and move to an old farmhouse in the Yorkshire countryside, where Mrs Waterbury supports the family by writing. Their new home is close to a railway, which plays an important part in the family's subsequent adventures. (I refer to Phyllis as a teenager, even though in the original book she was only 11, because here she is clearly intended to be older. Sally Thomsett, the actress who played her, was actually 20, three years older than Jenny Agutter and four older than Gary Warren who played Phyllis's supposedly older siblings). Even though her stories had been written some seventy years earlier, E. Nesbit was one of my favourite authors during my childhood. (The "E" stood for Edith; like J K Rowling she hid behind an initial because she feared that boys would not want to read books by a female author and that girls would not want to read her books if she adopted an explicitly male pseudonym). I loved her novel "The Railway Children" and was equally fond of the film which originally came out at around the same time (1970) as I was reading the book. I am not the only one to have enjoyed the film; it enjoys classic status in Britain and is sometimes even included in lists of the "greatest films ever made". I recently watched it again for the first time in many years, and was struck by how unlikely its basic premise is. The children know nothing of their father's plight until they accidentally come across a reference to his trial in an old newspaper; all they know is that he has "had to go away" somewhere. I would have thought that a real-life case of this nature would have caused a massive scandal, becoming a sort of British Dreyfus affair. If Mr Waterbury really had been guilty I could have understood his wife trying to shield his children from all knowledge of his disgrace, but as the charges against him are all completely false I would have thought that Mrs Waterbury, far from disappearing quietly up to Yorkshire, would have placed herself at the head of a vociferous campaign to vindicate her husband's innocence and secure his freedom. Moreover, there is far too much coincidence involved; a boy whom the children rescue after he injures himself during a paper-chase turns out to be the grandson of the Old Gentleman whom they have already befriended, who in turn proves to be the one man with the evidence to free their father. I would not, however, allow considerations like these to affect my enjoyment of the film too much. It was, after all, originally aimed at children, and children tend to be more tolerant than adults when it to plot holes and inconsistencies of this nature. There is, however, also plenty for adults to enjoy. For lovers of the countryside there is director Lionel Jeffries' photography of the magnificent scenery; although I am a proud Man of Kent I can well understand why Yorkshire folk refer to their native land as "God's Own County". For railway buffs there are the old steam trains, here painted in various liveries and attributed to the fictional 'Great Northern and Southern Railway'. (This was presumably done to head off any criticism; railway enthusiasts are notoriously sharp-eyed and would doubtless have seized on any errors had the producers attempted to feature a real railway company). Among the actors, the ones who really stood out for me were Bernard Cribbins as the eccentric but kindly station porter Albert Perks, a good friend of the children, and the lovely Jenny Agutter as Bobbie. Agutter, of course, went on to have a successful film career, but her two young co-stars do not seem to have been so fortunate. Thomsett's fortunes went into something of a decline after the television sit-com "Man about the House" in which she starred, came to an end. Warren was one of the leading British teenage stars of the early seventies, but after starring in television series like "Catweazle", "Alexander the Greatest" and "Whacko" seems to have given up acting for good. Despite my youthful enthusiasm, I am not sure that "The Railway Children" really belongs in the "greatest ever" category, but it was certainly a critical and commercial success at the time of its release and has remained popular ever since, helped by the fact that it is regularly shown on television. It can be seen as superior family entertainment, a children's version of the familiar "heritage cinema" style of film- making. 8/10

TheLittleSongbird Edith Nesbitt's best book has been adapted into a truly magnificent film, I love it. The film itself has gorgeous cinematography, and fine realisation of the subject matter. The ending is enough to have you in tears, as it is so beautifully done. Lionel has directed some truly excellent films, like the Amazing Mr Blunden, but this is his best film as director by a mile. The costumes were absolutely lovely, that matched the beauty of the countryside, and the sparkling and conveniently-faithful script helped matters. However, it is the quality of the acting that holds this film together, as it is nothing shorter than incredible. Dinah Sheridan is suitably sincere as the mother, a much-needed characteristic of the character, and Bernard Cribbins was hilarious as Perks. In fact, I preferred Perks on film, as he isn't as humorous in the book. The children were perfect. Gary Warren and Sally Thomsett both gave spirited performances, but it is Jenny Agutter's enchanting portrayal of Bobbie that impressed me the most. Another special mention is the gorgeous music by Johnny Douglas, the title music reminded me of Charlie Chaplin's Smile. In conclusion, a funny and poignant masterpiece, that is better than the book, I think. 10/10. Bethany Cox.

ozmy21 This is a film that I love above all others. I try to revisit the main film locations in Oakworth and Oxenhope whenever I can, which help to re-establish those magical qualities that this film seems to embody so uniquely - recalling a gentler and more mannered age, with its unspoken assertions that people really do matter, that family life is not just another disposable, and that life really is worth living (though sometimes, we may doubt that). In short, a film that soon brings tears to my eyes, helped perhaps by the deeply evocative music - some tunes are jaunty (like the Perks' tune, played on a trombone, sometimes with spoons), the stirring melody when the family first set off for Yorkshire not knowing what lies ahead, and the haunting little tune played on a solo clarinet (or is it an oboe?) that precedes sudden child-felt changes in fortune.This is as much a film for adults as for children, appealing to the eternal child in us all - a key that effortlessly reactivates those deep and apparently long-lost values and feelings buried inside us, which are normally swept aside by the demands of modern everyday life. This is a film about basic human goodness and decency in which we the viewers are left to make of it what we will, and there are welcome touches of humour sometimes added for good measure, such as the arrival of the aunt or, on a more earthy level, the bedroom scene on Perks' birthday - "All right Bert - as it's your birthday!" I must know every scene, every line of this film, and yet so great is the magic that each time I watch, it is like I am opening a box of delights for the first time, savouring each moment - sometimes humorous, sometimes....well, very different. As Peter says in the film: "it's perfect - more perfect than you know". And so it is!!!