Whistle Down the Wind

The film, Whistle Down the Wind, turned up in The Warehouse’s bargain DVDs this weekend, along with Tiger Bay and another similar movie, all in one package. I saw Tiger Bay when it first came out, but hadn’t ever seen this later Hayley Mills’ movie.
It’s a wonderful small-scale piece in which three young siblings who live on a farm discover a man hiding in their father’s barn, and come to believe he’s Jesus. The implications for the children, and the other village children, and the man himself, are profound. And even though we know the man isn’t Jesus, we understand the children’s belief and their theological questioning, and appreciate why they think the way they do.
The film would be nothing without the integrity of the two younger children and a number of others who are so much part of the landscape that everything about them is believable. Hayley Mills is very good, being almost the only child with previous film experience, but she doesn’t quite belong in this environment the way the other kids do. That’s not to say she doesn’t play the part well; Mills always had a sincerity and genuineness that transcended everything else about the films she appeared in. She was a natural screen performer and deserved the accolades she got.
The film plays out almost entirely on a real farm, where the slush and mud is authentic, the buildings are as old as they look, and the craggy trees and the winter sunshine are bleak but not unbeautiful. Even though the interiors were mostly shot at Pinewood Studios, they match the exteriors well.
The story is moving, but more than anything it’s the faces of the children that are so wonderful. These Northern kids for the most part went back to their normal lives, but you’d think they’d been working in movies since the day they were born. There’s not a drop of ‘acting’ anywhere. Diane Holgate as Hayley Mills’ younger sister has that Northern stance and way of looking that was still visible on Coronation St up until a few years ago. Alan Barnes lives the part from beginning to end: the irritating little brother, the child angrily questioning Jesus as to why he didn’t keep his kitten alive, the innocent little boy quite capable of facing up to his perpetually annoyed aunt, the birthday boy demanding that his game be played because it’s his birthday.
There’s another boy in it whose face, the moment it appeared, was familiar. So strong are his features that they didn’t change a jot as he progressed into adulthood. While I wouldn’t have known his name, Roy Holder, it’s interesting to see that he’s been going strong ever since Whistle Down the Wind was made.
And then there are a host of other children: reality written all over them.
Bernard Miles, Norman Bird and Alan Bates are the main adult characters, and fit in with the milieu well.

Washed by Soaps!

Soaps. You love ‘em or loathe ‘em – and a few of us sit somewhere in the middle, slightly uncomfortable on the fence, avoiding them one day, glancing at them another, and then getting totally involved in an episode – usually against our better judgement because we should be doing ‘something more important.’
It’s pretty scary to think, for instance, that Coronation Street has been running as long as I’ve been working: 46 years. Even scarier to think that William Roache, who plays Ken Barlow, has been working in that show, in that one part, for that same amount of time.
Even Shortland Street has been running 14 years. 14 years!
An article on Wikipedia talks about the regurgitating of stereotypes on these shows: as one character is killed off, another character turns up (not always straight away) to replace the now-missing stereotype. It’s perhaps more obvious in Coronation Street, but Shortland Street has its own stereotypes as well.
All these Soap Operas have their own sites, of course, but for the last five months or so a new US site has been up and running called, not surprisingly, soaps.com. It focuses on American soaps, particularly the daytime ones, and gives you just about all the info you’d ever need, from daily updates to news about characters, from comings and goings to spoilers, from weekly polls to a ratings race. There are nearly 100 links on the main page alone.
Don’t check it out when you should be doing ‘something more important.’
The home page is a little oddly laid out: one long column down the left, joining up eventually with another long column down the right. And a lot of it is pink. Hmmm….pink? Does this suggest that only women watch soaps?

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