Thursday Matinee: Whistle Down The Wind (1961) – Hayley Mills, Alan Bates, Bernard Lee

Whistle Down the Wind is a 1961 British children’s crime drama film directed by Bryan Forbes, adapted by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall from the 1959 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.

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.^[2] In Sunday School the children quiz their teacher and become even more convinced in their belief. MORE AT LINK