Tom's Midnight Garden

When his brother catches measles, Tom is sent to stay in his uncle and aunt’s flat, which has no garden. He may be infectious himself, so he is not allowed outside; the days drag and at night he cannot sleep. One night he hears the communal grandfather clock strike thirteen, goes down, and finds a large sunlit garden where the small back yard should be. The girl he meets there, and the question of which time that garden belongs to, are the film’s real subject, and the difference between the length of a childhood and the length of a life comes out slowly. Willard Carroll adapted it from Philippa Pearce’s novel and wrote the screenplay himself. Anthony Way plays Tom, with Greta Scacchi, Joan Plowright and Florence Hoath in the cast. It was filmed at Chenies Manor in Buckinghamshire.