Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1858 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-05-17
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Black & White, PAL, Special Edition
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Synopsis

When a young girl finds an injured man hiding in her father's barn, she asks who he is. Startled by the girl, he exclaims "Jesus Christ!" and falls into an exhausted stupor. His striking resemblance to a picture postcard of Jesus confirms to her and her siblings that it really is Him. The word spreads about "a certain person" amongst the children of the Lancashire village, and secret parcels of food and gifts are brought to nourish and reassure Him. The grown-ups ultimately find out about the terrible confusion the children feel when the Man, who is brought out by the police, is touchingly palpable. An angelic Alan Bates enigmatically plays the Man, who is in fact an escaped prisoner; Hayley Mills plays the delightful eldest child Kathy. Her little brother and sister are played by Diane Holgate, and a particularly loveable and cheeky Alan Barnes, who declares over breakfast that he's eaten "198 eggs since last Easter." This enchanting allegory, written by Mills' mother Mary Hayley Bell, is charming and amusing enough to avoid being sentimental, and has deservedly become a classic.

Customer Reviews

Blessed!
What an absolutely lovely movie. Three children, two sisters and their brother, who live in a farm, discover a man one day hiding in their barn. They ask who he is, and the man, shocked, utters the exclamation, "Jesus Christ". From then on, the children think the man is Jesus.
The film follows a charming course, which will warm your heart, and at moment, break your heart too. Whistle Down The Wind is a portrait of platonic love between strangers, and the absolute trust children are willing to give adults who, they believe, deserve it.
Not a film to be missed - perfect for watching on a grey, rainy afternoon when there is nothing else to do...and simply poignant.

Childhood memories
Being a child of the 50's - 60's, one film, to me, epitomises this era, Whistle down the wind. The styles, and the innocence of the children catches everything of my childhood. Its a wonderful film, one that I have watched many times.

From the Perspective of an 'Extra' - 45 Years On
I was one of the schoolchildren who ran on in the closing minutes of the film, to the farm at the foot of Worsaw Hill in Lancashire. There were several takes of this scene, and we alternately ran into the farmyard from along the stream in front, and down a rather steep part of the hill and into the farmyard. Many of the children chosen for disciple parts and principal parts were from Chatburn Primary School. The entire front row in the final gate scene were also Chatburn schoolkids. We were paid ten shillings as extras for each day's shooting. I remember earlier in the year - probably 1960 - Bryan Forbes and Dickie Attenborough came round to the school, and we were all lined up against a wall while they were doing cast selections.

Of course the film was a big hit locally when it premiered (at the Odeon in Burnley). It still is, as most people in the surrounding villages are related to someone who was in it.

It was a long time before I was able to develop a proper adult opinion of 'Whistle'. What strikes me now is how opinion in various reviews I have seen, and discussed, splits along the lines of the division of opinion among the protagonists. Having once 'identified' The Man as Jesus, even in spite of ("adult") evidence to the contrary, Kathy and Nan, and apparently also the disciples, persist in believing that he was Jesus and is being persecuted all over again. Charlie is the lone dissenter, who interprets the evidence of his senses and concludes "It's not Jesus. It's just a fella". So the overall flavour of the film from an analytical perspective is that in the matter of religious faith, presentation of contrary facts is completely irrelevant to the persistence of the belief. A more cynical twist on this: in so far as only children were party to the belief, while adults only saw a dangerous criminal, it suggests that irrational belief systems require a childlike worldview. This is doubly damning for Faith versus Facts.

And yet, People Still Believe.