The Railway Children (1970)

Director:

Lionel Jeffries

Writers:

Lionel Jeffries (screenplay)
E. Nesbit (novel)

Release Date:

18 December 1971 (Japan)

Genre:

Family | Drama

Tagline:

The Railway, the Children . . . and the wonderful secret they'll share with you ! [UK]

Plot:

The film opens in a happy, comfortable upper middle-class home in Victorian London. One night the three...

Plot Keywords:

Children | Railway | Country | Train | Missing Father

Awards:

Nominated for 2 BAFTA Film Awards. Another 1 nomination

Cast

Dinah Sheridan	...	Mrs. Waterbury (as Miss Dinah Sheridan)
Bernard Cribbins	...	Albert Perks (as Mr. Bernard Cribbins)
William Mervyn	...	Old Gentleman (as Mr. William Mervyn)
Iain Cuthbertson	...	Charles Waterbury (as Mr. Iain Cuthbertson)
Jenny Agutter	...	Roberta 'Bobbie' Waterbury (as Miss Jenny Agutter)
Sally Thomsett	...	Phyllis Waterbury (as Miss Sally Thomsett)
Gary F. Warren	...	Peter Waterbury (as Master Gary Warren)
Peter Bromilow	...	Doctor Forrest
Ann Lancaster	...	Ruth
Gordon Whiting	...	Russian
Beatrix Mackey	...	Aunt Emma
Deddie Davies	...	Mrs. Nell Perks
David Lodge	...	Bandmaster
Christopher Witty	...	Jim
Brenda Cowling	...	Mrs. Hilda Viney
Paddy Ward	...	Cart Man
Erik Chitty	...	Photographer
Sally James	...	Maid
Dominic Allan	...	CID Man (as Dominic Allen)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Amelia Bayntun	...	Cook (uncredited)
Paul Luty	...	Malcolm (uncredited)

Directed by
Lionel Jeffries

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Lionel Jeffries		screenplay
E. Nesbit		novel

Produced by
Robert Lynn	....	producer

Original Music by
Johnny Douglas

Cinematography by
Arthur Ibbetson		(director of photography)

Film Editing by
Teddy Darvas

Casting by
G.B. Walker

Art Direction by
John Clark

Makeup Department
Jock Alexander	....	makeup artist
Helen Lennox	....	hair stylist

Production Management
David Griffith	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Richard F. Dalton	....	assistant director (as Richard Dalton)
Terry Hodgkinson	....	second assistant director (uncredited)

Art Department
Geoffrey Leggett	....	set dresser
Bryn Siddall	....	property buyer (uncredited)

Sound Department
Len Abbott	....	sound recordist
Bill Creed	....	sound editor
Peter Handford	....	sound recordist
Denis Porter	....	sound recordist

Special Effects by
Pat Moore	....	special effects
John Richardson	....	special effects

Camera and Electrical Department
Ronnie Pilgrim	....	still photographer
Paul Wilson	....	camera operator

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Elsa Fennell	....	wardrobe supervisor

Music Department
Johnny Douglas	....	conductor

Other crew
Joy Bayley	....	production secretary
Robert Cryer	....	railway technical advisor
Richard Gill	....	location manager
Angela Martelli	....	continuity

Production Companies

• EMI Film Productions (as EMI Film Productions Limited)

Distributors

• MGM-EMI (1970) (UK) (theatrical) (released through) (as M.G.M.-E.M.I. Film Distributors Ltd.)
• Universal Pictures (1971) (USA) (theatrical)
• National Broadcasting Company (NBC) (1972) (USA) (TV)
• Anglo-EMI Film Distributors (1970) (UK) (theatrical)
• Anchor Bay Entertainment (????) (USA) (DVD)
• Mainostelevisio (MTV3) (1988) (Finland) (TV) (as MTV1)
• Warner Home Video (1989) (UK) (VHS)
• Warner Home Video (2003) (UK) (DVD)
• Yleisradio (YLE) (1999) (Finland) (TV) (TV2)

Other Companies

• Keighley and Worth Valley Railway  the producers wish to thank for their cooperation in the making of this picture (as The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway)
• People of Yorkshire  the producers wish to thank for their cooperation in the making of this picture (as The People of Yorkshire)

Runtime:

109 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Certification:

Iceland:L | Sweden:Btl | USA:G | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Bents Farm, Oxenhope, West Yorkshire, England, UK

Company:

EMI Film Productions

Trivia:

Both Jenny Agutter (Bobbie) and Christopher Witty (Jim) played the same roles in a 1968 BBC serial based on "The Railway Children".

Goofs:

Continuity: When the toy train blows up we see the dog running out of the house into the bushes on a clearly spring or summer's day. However, it is supposed to be at Christmas time. The next time we have an outdoor shot, it is snowing heavily.

Quotes:

Bobbie Waterbury: It's Perks's birthday, he's 42, he says he got other things to keep than his birthday, not rabbits and secrets but the kids and the bloomin' missus.
Mrs. Waterbury: Wife and children Bobbie.
Bobbie Waterbury: Same thing isn't it?
Phyllis Waterbury: Bloomin' missus is a sort of a germ of endearment isn't it?
Mrs. Waterbury: Term of endearment Phil.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Red Dwarf: The Starbuggers - Series VI (2005) (V)

Romanticised nostalgia for the days of steam

Such is the impact of Lionel Jeffries magical 1970 film version of `The Railway Children' that I can well recall the time my grandfather dragged me from my play to watch one of his favourite movies when it was first screened on television. A quarter of a century later as a father of a small boy my interest has been revived and I find myself becoming something of a railway child once more. The number of privately restored railways that exist conveniently to hand, as though to undermine Dr Richard Beeching's efficiency cuts of the 1960's, further help this pastime. Most notable of these is the Bluebell Railway in Sussex, one of the first and best known revived lines, used by Catherine Morshead for Carlton TV's remake of this movie in 2000. The actual location used for this first film was in Bronte country with the Haworth Parsonage passing for the doctor's house, though the true star was the Keighly and Worth Valley Railway which had been reopened by volunteers six years after its closure in 1962. This film was well liked by the younger generation besotted with all things `Thomas the Tank Engine', including `Thomas and the Magic Railway' an all American reworking of Rev W Awdry's creation starring Alec Baldwin and Henry Fonda, serving to add to the ever growing collectable models now available.

A middle class family lose their government official of a father on spying charges and are forced to adjourn to the country in reduced circumstances to a wonderful house that many would dream of living in. Being spared incarceration in a school, the fate of most of today's children, they fully enjoy their privileged freedom and have some adventure through befriending the neighbouring railway line. A word of caution should however be issued regarding the landslide and near train crash, which had a disturbing effect on the younger viewer, though undoubtedly in a different sense to that imprinted on the minds of some older fans. The moment when Jenny Agutter as the pristine heroine Bobby faints dead away after powerfully arresting the train is matched in the lump-in-the-throat stakes when she runs along the platform for the reunion with her father with her immortal cry of "Daddy, my Daddy".

Before returning to the UK to star in The Railway Children, Agutter had spent three months touring the Australian Outback for the filming of Walkabout and being disconsolate about where society was going was unsure of doing the film, but fortunately she was charmed by the director's vitality. He had been encouraged by his daughter to turn the book into a film and Agutter was a natural choice having already played the part of Bobbie two years earlier for a BBC serial. The film provided Agutter her breakthrough first part in the National Theatre four years later as Shakespeare's Miranda, opposite Sir John Gielgud's Prospero, in `The Tempest'. This in turn led to an eighteen year career in the US, with such memorable films as the cult sci-fi `Logan's Run' and the successful horror and humour cross in `An American Werewolf in London', as well as one of her personal favourite creations as the ill-used Ann in Beryl Bainbridge's strangely unromantic `Sweet William'. As well as being official patron of the Edith Nesbit and The Railway Children website, Agutter has been working on a dramatisation of the author's life, and would seem the obvious choice for the role having such a deep professional connection. Sally Thomsett winsomely squeezes her notoriously corseted twenty-year-old frame into the role of the younger sister Phyllis, some six years her junior, and her brother Peter is an ably suited Gary Warren. A very graceful Dinah Sheridan is Mrs Waterbury, the mother, whilst Bernard Cribbins creates a manic porter in Perks.

As a teenager Edith Nesbit lived for three years at Halstead Hall, near Knockholt Station in Kent with its deep railway cuttings and tunnels and about half an hour from London, which is believed to have given her the inspiration for her famed novel. Nesbit's use of her plain initial for her writing disguised her gender back in 1906 and whether or not this was a conscious intention it led to her occasionally being thought a male writer. Why J K Rowling of Harry Potter fame should chose to do the same nearly a century later escapes me especially as the identity behind any pseudonym is easily uncovered today? Possibly it is to do with the tradition of male fantasy writers using only their initials, as in such luminaries as J M Barrie, C S Lewis, and J R R Tolkein. Women writers today surely don't face the same difficulties and social barriers that the Bronte sisters and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) had, being forced to take masculine nom de plumes in order to get their work published, but do they fear that male readers will automatically be deterred if the work is obviously by a ‘girl'? Conversely it is a man, who coyly disguises his gender presumably for a female market, that has written the romantic novels of Emma Blair. Curiously, whilst the Brontes have subsequently been published under their own names rather than their Bell aliases, George Eliot's work has not been liberated in this way. If literature, that previously anonymous and faceless industry, enabling women to compete on an equal footing, continues the current invidious marketing trend of promoting works by beautiful and youthful authors rather than on the merits of the works alone, then how can any other industry ever stand a hope of breaking the sexist and ageist glass ceilings?

The legacy of this film and the book continues with its name being used by a Wigan based pop group in 1984, and in 1995 for the very worthy charity for vulnerable youngsters arriving alone at railway stations in some of the world's poorest countries. The film still represents family entertainment at its best with nostalgia for another time and place enhancing the tale.