Red Rock Entertainment Review: The Railway Children

The first book adaptation into film happened in 1970 when Lionel Jeffries wrote his first script and started his very first film production. After the exquisite work of turning the book characters into flesh-and-blood representations of Bobbie, Phyllis, and Peter, the words "Send our love to Father" will forever remain in the minds of all Brits and families who had the pleasure to watch this flexography masterpiece. And even though, as Red Rock Entertainment film experts point out, the film never received any award, only two BAFTA nominations and one Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music nomination, this film, book, and story have become the eternal classics of family films since 1970.
The film is very closely related to the book’s story and tells about the times of a rural innocence before World War One. This was a happy well-to-do family of Waterbury: a mother, a father, and their three wonderful children. They lived in London and were fortunate enough not to live in poverty. But one night, the family gets torn apart by the unfortunate circumstances, when the Father gets arrested and imprisoned on obscure circumstances. As the story unfolds, the viewers learn that the Father (Michael Kitchen) gets accused of spying and hence imprisoned for the whole film. This is the moment when the Mother (Dinah Sheridan) utters her famous line: "We've got to play at being poor for a bit," she says not to scare the children: Roberta (Jenny Agutter), Phyllis (Sally Thomsett) and Peter (Gary Warren). So they pack and set off to leave their beloved home in London to live at a lovely cottage but in the rural area.
The house they move into is lovely but shabby, and there is no entertainment the kids got used to in the capital. This is why they all turn to the passing-by trains and railway station for entertainment. In their short travels and mini-adventures, the three children befriend a loveable guy Perks (Bernard Cribbins) and also meet a scary station master (Bernard Cribbins). The story develops and unveils when a Russian dissident (Gordon Whiting) starts helping the children to untangle the story of their father’s arrest and eventually leads to the so-much-wanted and beloved ending when Bobbie screams "Daddy, my Daddy!" and runs back to her Father at the railway station nearby.
In the course of the film, the city-born and raised kids who, though well-mannered and educated, are a bit spoiled and detached from life turn to become more of adults. When coming to the rural area into a house full of rats, they help their mother clean-up it all to make a house feel like home. When Mother falls victim to sickness, Peter, being the only man in the family, grows up to become a protector and helps the sisters to care for the Mother. This story tells how committed children manage to bring home their family member and prove that every hard work and faith do get rewarded in the end.
After so many years, this film adaptation made by Lionel Jeffries remains the most loved and dear for anyone who adores the original story by Nesbit. In 2010, the immortal story of the family’s path on big screen celebrated its 40th anniversary, so it was reinvented on Blue-Ray with better sound and also included interviews and recollections of the actors about their filming days. Gary Collins from Red Rock Entertainment reported that with better sound and additional materials the old-fashioned traditional nicety of this film reinvented its fame and gave already the third wave of warmth and rosiness towards this incredible project and story.
Whether you read the original book by Edith Nesbit or watch the splendid adaption of The Railway Children by Lionel Jeffries, the story will never lose its delighters and light pleasure one can enjoy. And even you have already read the book from cover to cover or watched every shot of the film in slow motion, this adaptation can still be a perfect film to watch with the whole family on a Sunday night