Mocked by some for sentimentality when it came out 40 years ago, Lionel Jeffries’s family film now looks less forced than a good many present-day offerings.
It does what it sets out to do very well indeed. This is largely because Jeffries has an excellent cast (Dinah Sheridan, Bernard Cribbins, William Mervyn, Ian Cuthbertson and Jenny Agutter) and plucks the heart strings without spreading gooey treacle all over the story.
It all turns on the unfairly arrested dad, the mother who pretends she’s just playing at poverty when the family have to move to a small village, and the children, who, when they find out, are determined to prove dad’s innocence.
The Edwardian setting and all those lovely old trains produce a bucketful of nostalgia too. No broken society then, apparently. (Opens tomorrow)
The Railway Children
Cert: U
