Darby O'Gill and the Little People

Darby O'Gill keeps the lodge on an Irish estate and nobody believes the stories he tells in the pub. Then he really does fall down a well and arrives in the underground hall of the king of the fairies. The king entertains him; Darby looks for a way to extract three wishes. Meanwhile a new caretaker is courting his daughter. The subject is not the fairy tale but an old man losing his place. Darby loses his job and his home, and his dealings with the fairies are a form of denial. The death coach that arrives near the end is unexpectedly frightening for a children's film, and that is the passage generations remember. The form rests on the most ambitious tricks of its day. The fairies were shot with real actors using forced perspective and sets built at different scales; people of two sizes share a frame and even now the joins are hard to see. The most cited detail is the casting. Sean Connery, who plays the young caretaker, was unknown at the time and even sings in it. It was made three years before the first Bond film, and the studio had him under contract for this. Albert Sharpe plays Darby and Janet Munro his daughter. Robert Stevenson directs. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Disney and Irish folklore. Who it is not for: anyone watching with small children; the last section is genuinely frightening.