Universal have put two family movies onto one disc, and strange bedfellows they make.
First is a movie adaptation of children's classic by E. V. Nesbit, The Railway Children, set in early Edwardian England just after the turn of the Century. It's filmed with a delicious sense of period style and filled with the beauty of the Yorkshire landscape.
Then comes an adaptation of Arthur Ransome's 1929 saga of kids mucking about in boats, Swallows and Amazons. I remember way back that the Ransome books were a real delight. The film is anything but.
But first, The Railway Children. This is the saga of London's Waterbury family, whose father is unfairly placed in prison, and who must start -- mother, two daughters and son -- a new and frugal life in the Yorkshire countryside.
The star of the movie is Jenny Agutter as the eldest daughter, Bobbie. This was in fact her second appearance in The Railway Children; she had starred in a BBC television adaptation just two years earlier. She featured some years later in a third adaptation: this time, as the mother.
Bobbie plans and schemes to have her father released from prison. While she's about that, she's also able to bring together a Russian exile with his separated wife, assist an injured steeplechaser (a boy, not a horse)and even avert a train disaster.
It's a well-told story -- a true family movie which is too good for just the kids. And as a trivia note, watch for actress Sally Thomsett, who plays Bobbie's younger sister Phyllis. Although playing a girl aged around 12, Sally was in fact was quite a bit older than Jenny Agutter -- old enough in fact to crop up a couple of years later as the daft blonde bird in the British sitcom Man About the House.
As a second trivia note, Jenny Agutter, when she made this movie, was just one year away from starring in the film which forever made her famous -- the Australian outback drama Walkabout.
As for Swallows and Amazons -- well, this 1974 movie is trash. The novel was about kids who muck about on boats -- the movie has become more about middle-aged men who like mucking about on boats with little kids. It's very suspect; a model lesson in how to NOT make children's films.
