Whistle Down the Wind

A farm in the north of England. Three children find a wounded man hiding in the barn. They ask who he is; in pain, he says the name of Jesus. The children take it for an answer and decide he is Jesus. They carry him food, spread the secret to the other children in the village, and the barn becomes a place of pilgrimage. The man is a murderer and the police are looking for him. Bryan Forbes directs in his first film. Hayley Mills plays Kathy and Alan Bates plays the man. The source is a novel by Mary Hayley Bell, who was Hayley Mills's mother. The idea is how belief is constructed. The children begin from a piece of wrong information and build an entire order on it; the child who objects is shut out, and none of the adults notices anything. The narrative does not mock them. The children's seriousness is preserved and the film makes nobody look foolish at the end. The image is black and white and shot on location, the Lancashire countryside in winter, muddy and cold. It is among Alan Bates's first film roles and the character barely speaks. Who it is for: viewers who like British realist cinema and films told from a child's view. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, little happens, and the metaphor is too plain for some.