Whistle Down the Wind | |
---|---|
Directed by | Bryan Forbes |
Screenplay by | Keith Waterhouse Willis Hall |
Based on | Whistle Down the Wind by Mary Hayley Bell |
Produced by | Richard Attenborough |
Starring | Hayley Mills Bernard Lee Alan Bates |
Cinematography | Arthur Ibbetson |
Edited by | Max Benedict |
Music by | Malcolm Arnold |
Production companies | Beaver Pictures Allied Film Makers |
Distributed by | J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors |
Release date |
|
Running time | 99 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | £148,000 [1] |
Whistle Down the Wind is a 1961 British crime drama film directed by Bryan Forbes, adapted by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall from the 1958 novel of the same name by Mary Hayley Bell. The film stars her daughter Hayley Mills, who was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress for this film. [2]
Unusually, almost all the main characters are children; the film attempts to show the world through the eyes of an innocent child.
In 2005, the British Film Institute included it in its list of the 50 films that children should see by the age of 14.
Three Lancashire farm children discover a bearded fugitive (the Man/Arthur Blakey) hiding in their barn and mistake him for Jesus Christ. They come to this conclusion because of their Sunday School stories and Blakey's shocked exclamation of "Jesus Christ!" when Kathy, the eldest child, accidentally discovers him. [3] In Sunday School the children quiz their teacher and become even more convinced in their belief.
The story spreads to the other children and ten visit him in the barn. While he sits in the hay in a Bethlehem-type setting, they bring him gifts and kneel as they present them. They ask for a story. They want a Bible story, but he reads to them from a newspaper. When two adults appear, the children have to leave, and Blakey has to hide in the hay. He asks why they are helping and Kathy says "because we love you" and hands him a folded Bible picture of Jesus.
In a playground, one boy gets bullied for saying he has seen Jesus. The children watch in dismay as the boy eventually renounces his statement. When Kathy says she has seen him, the bully slaps her face.
Blakey—initially confused about why the three Bostock children are eager to protect him from adult discovery—makes no attempt to correct their mistake, especially when he discovers the eldest child, Kathy, is determined to keep him hidden from the local police, despite the posters circulating in the nearby town that reveal he is wanted for murder.
When Blakey lets a kitten die, with no remorse, a doubt is sown in the minds of some of the children. The children quiz the vicar as to why Jesus does not save every person and animal and he says it is so the world does not get crowded.
Blakey sends Kathy to retrieve a package he has hidden. A police manhunt takes place as Kathy searches. She finds the package under a rail in a railway tunnel. This provides Blakey with a revolver.
At Charles' birthday party, Nan takes an extra piece of cake and lets slip it is "for Jesus". Charles says it is not Jesus, it is "just a fella."
Kathy's father realises the connection to the missing criminal and the police are called in to apprehend the criminal. The father waits outside the barn with a shotgun.
The children of the village, perhaps 100 of them now in on the secret, converge on the barn. Kathy sneaks behind the barn and passes a pack of cigarettes through a hole, but she has forgotten matches. She says she has not betrayed him, but the police are closing in. He forgives her and, after much prompting from her, promises she will see him again. Resigned to his fate, Blakey tosses his handgun out of the barn door and surrenders to the police.
Blakey stands arms outstretched as he is frisked. His silhouette echoes the crucifixion.
Once Blakey is taken away and the crowd disperses, Kathy is approached by two very young children who ask to see Jesus. She tells them that they missed him this time, but he will be back one day.
The novel was published in 1959. Mary Bell based the three children on her own children, including Hayley Mills. [4]
The novel was turned into a stage play. The film rights were bought by Bryan Forbes and Richard Attenborough, who had moved into film production. They were friends of John Mills and Mary Bell and secured Hayley Mills to play the lead. She had just made Pollyanna for Disney. [5]
Forbes was so taken with the material that he wanted to write the script and direct. However, the Millses would not approve him. This upset Forbes, who withdrew from the project. Attenborough hired Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall to write the script and Guy Green to direct. It was Waterhouse and Hall who decided to relocate the book's setting from Kent to Lancashire. Weeks before filming was to start, Green pulled out of the film to accept an offer at MGM. Attenborough suggested that Forbes direct, but John Mills and Mary wanted Attenborough to do it. Attenborough had no ambitions towards directing then, and knew how badly Forbes wanted the job, so he persuaded the Millses to listen to a pitch from Forbes as to how he would do it. The pitch was successful and they gave their approval. [6] [7]
Alan Bates, in his first starring film role, played the man in the barn. Local schoolchildren from the Lancashire villages around Burnley and Clitheroe were used as extras; children from Chatburn Primary School played the 'disciples'. The theme music by Malcolm Arnold became a classic. [8]
Bryan Forbes put the budget at £161,000, although other sources say it was lower. [9]
The film contrasts the children's innocent faith with the pragmatic and suspicious adults in the town. Heavy in allegory, many of the characters and events parallel those found in historical Christian literature. In one scene, a child is mocked and beaten into denying he had seen Jesus. After the boy's third denial, a train whistle is heard (representing Peter's denial in Luke 22). The strains of 'We Three Kings' can be discerned in the score as Kathy, her brother and sister march with the food 'gifts' they have acquired for the man in the 'stable'. They are spotted and followed by a group of country children (shepherds). The early core of children who are in on the secret number a dozen and are specifically called the Disciples in the film credits. When apprehended, Blakey is immediately frisked by police; his arms outstretched at his sides are a clear reference to the Crucifixion.
In contrast with the children's concerns about Jesus, their local vicar's concerns are earthly. After being interrupted by Kathy in his reading at a café of Gently at the Summit, her parish priest avoids all questions of Christ and turns the tables, accusing the world of stealing church property.
The film had its world premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square on 20 July 1961. It played there for three weeks, ending its run on 9 August, three days after it began its general release in the London area.
The film received praise from The New York Times . [10]
Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote: 'The story has a trickily effective beginning and a moderately effective conclusion, but no middle. Nothing really happens in the film; the kids make their initial mistake about the fugitive and after a while he is captured. That's all. The incident is not used for any poetic, religious, or ironic significance'. [11]
The film was nominated for four BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards:
By September 1961, Rank were reporting the film was "exceeding expectations" commercially. [12] The film was the eighth most popular film at the UK box office in 1961. Others popular at the time included Swiss Family Robinson, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Carry On Regardless, The Rebel and The Long and the Short and the Tall. [13]
By 1971, it had earned a profit of over £240,000. [1] Forbes later said it was the most popular and profitable film he ever made. [9]
In 1984, rock group Toto used the plot of the movie for their music video 'Stranger in Town'. The song is on their album Isolation . [14]
In the late 1980s, Russell Labey and Richard Taylor adapted the film into a musical of the same name for the National Youth Music Theatre. [15]
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman later created a more commercial adaptation. Highlight songs from their musical version are 'Vaults of Heaven', 'Whistle Down the Wind' by Tina Arena, and 'No Matter What', which became a very successful Boyzone hit. [16]
Sir John Mills was an English actor who appeared in more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades. He excelled on camera as an appealing British everyman who often portrayed guileless, wounded war heroes. In 1971, he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Ryan's Daughter.
The L-Shaped Room is a 1962 British drama romance film directed by Bryan Forbes, based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Lynne Reid Banks. It tells the story of Jane Fosset, a young French woman, unmarried and pregnant, who moves into a cheap London boarding house, befriending a young man, Toby, in the building. The work is considered part of the kitchen sink realism school of British drama. The film reflected a trend in British films of greater frankness about sex and displays a sympathetic treatment of outsiders "unmarried mothers, lesbian or black" as well as a "largely natural and non-judgmental handling of their problems". As director, Forbes represents "a more romantic, wistful type of realism" than that of Tony Richardson or Lindsay Anderson.
Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a 1964 British crime thriller film, directed by Bryan Forbes, and starring Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough, Nanette Newman, Mark Eden and Patrick Magee. Based on the 1961 novel by Mark McShane, the film follows a mentally unstable medium who convinces her husband to kidnap a child so she can help the police solve the crime and achieve renown for her abilities. Kim Stanley was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film.
Whistle Down the Wind is a musical with music composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who also co-wrote its book with Patricia Knop and Gale Edwards, and its lyrics were written by Jim Steinman. It is based on the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind, whose source novel of the same name was written by Mary Hayley Bell in 1958.
Whistle Down the Wind may refer to:
Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills is a British actress. The daughter of Sir John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell and younger sister of actress Juliet Mills, she began her acting career as a child and was hailed as a promising newcomer, winning the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her performance in the British crime drama film Tiger Bay (1959), the Academy Juvenile Award for Disney's Pollyanna (1960) and Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress in 1961.
Bryan Forbes CBE was an English film director, screenwriter, film producer, actor and novelist described as a "Renaissance man" and "one of the most important figures in the British film industry".
Willis Edward Hall was an English playwright and radio, television and film writer who drew on his working-class roots in Leeds for much of his writing. Willis formed an extremely prolific partnership with his life-long friend Keith Waterhouse producing over 250 works. He wrote plays such as Billy Liar, The Long and the Short and the Tall, and Celebration; the screenplays for Whistle Down the Wind, A Kind of Loving and Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain; and television programmes including Budgie, Worzel Gummidge and Minder. His passion for musical theatre led to a string of hits, including Wind in the Willows, The Card, and George Stiles' and Anthony Drewe's Peter Pan: A Musical Adventure.
Mary Hayley Bell, Lady Mills was an English actress and writer, married for 64 years to actor Sir John Mills. Her novel Whistle Down the Wind was adapted as a film, starring her teenaged daughter, actress Hayley Mills.
The Family Way is a 1966 British comedy-drama film produced and directed by John and Roy Boulting, respectively, and starring father and daughter John Mills and Hayley Mills. Based on Bill Naughton's play All in Good Time (1963), with screenplay by Naughton, the film began life in 1961 as the television play Honeymoon Postponed. It is about the marital difficulties of a young newlywed couple living in a crowded house with the husband's family.
Only Two Can Play is a 1962 British comedy film directed by Sidney Gilliat starring Peter Sellers, Mai Zetterling and Virginia Maskell. The screenplay was by Bryan Forbes, based on the 1955 novel That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis.
Tiger Bay is a 1959 British crime drama film directed by J. Lee Thompson. It stars John Mills as a police superintendent investigating a murder; his real-life daughter Hayley Mills, in her first major film role, as a girl who witnesses the murder; and Horst Buchholz as a young sailor who commits the murder in a moment of passion. The title refers to the Tiger Bay district of Cardiff, where much of the film was shot.
Sky West and Crooked is a 1966 British romantic drama film starring Hayley Mills. The film was directed by her father, John Mills, and was co-written by her mother, Mary Hayley Bell.
The 15th British Academy Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1962, honoured the best films of 1961.
The 14th British Academy Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1961, honoured the best films of 1960.
In Search of the Castaways is a 1962 American adventure film starring Maurice Chevalier and Hayley Mills in a tale about a worldwide search for a shipwrecked sea captain. The film was produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Robert Stevenson from a screenplay by Lowell S. Hawley, based upon Jules Verne's 1868 adventure novel Captain Grant's Children.
Mr. Forbush and the Penguins is a 1971 British comedy drama film, directed by Arne Sucksdorff, Alfred Viola and Roy Boulting. It stars John Hurt, Hayley Mills, Dudley Sutton and Tony Britton. It is based on the 1965 novel Forbush and the Penguins by Graham Billing.
Whistle Down the Wind is a musical based on the 1959 novel by Mary Hayley Bell, adapted by Richard Taylor and Russell Labey, with music and lyrics by Richard Taylor.
Whistle Down the Wind was a novella written by Mary Hayley Bell and illustrated by Ōven Edwards. It was published in 1958 by T.V. Boardman & Co. The central characters are three children — Swallow, Brat and Poor Baby who are based on the author's own children Juliet, Hayley and Jonathan Mills. The story is narrated by Brat.
Allied Film Makers was a shortlived British production company, formed in November 1959, which produced several films. Producer Sydney Box came up with the idea of forming a consortium of film-makers that would distribute the films they made. Box had to drop out of the company owing to illness, but four partnerships agreed to join: Basil Dearden and Michael Relph; Jack Hawkins; Richard Attenborough and Bryan Forbes; and Hawkins's brother. Guy Green later joined the Forbes-Attenborough group. Each group put up £5,000 and the Rank Organisation guaranteed distribution.