Le vent garde son secret

An absolute gem of a movie, that will appeal to both the religious, & atheists alike, since it intelligently sides with neither side. WDTW is a beautifully crafted study in "belief", faith and innocence.

Reminiscent of Ken Loach's 1969 film Kes (although the two are very different films) in so much that it accurately portrays a time & place, by using genuine locals as a supporting cast, thus giving a true sense of authenticity because of the genuine regional accents.

Little Alan Barnes's natural lancashire dialect is a pure delight in the opening scene with "The sally army lady", and his loss of "faith" in "Jesus" ("T' aint Jesus, its just some fellah") is a poignant counterpoint to Mills's stoic acceptance of the fugitive hiding in the family barn as her saviour.

Highly recommended viewing.

Beautifully photographed in black and white this film should be considered a MASTERPIECE! Haley Millsgives the performance of her career (maybe next to"Tiger Bay) as Cathy. Alan Bates is also excellent! It is real shame that these classic films do not get airplay on cable.

Adolescent English farm-girl discovers an escaped, bearded convict sleeping in the family barn and thinks he's Jesus. Young Kathy needs to believe this, even after the police come to cart him away. He even drops a picture of the Savior, which seems to symbolize not only the prisoner's fall from grace but one more sign for Kathy that, yes, this mysterious man might be Him. "Whistle Down the Wind" is a hard-shelled movie that says we lose hope and faith as we mature--which isn't an original idea for a film, but the cynical way this is presented catches you off-guard. One little boy numbers the eggs he has has eaten (a mixture of his bemusement and his feeling of monotony), one little girl vows to keep counting until Kathy comes out of the barn. These children need to believe too, of course, but they're much more raw than Kathy; they strip ideas down to the basics. Kathy believes blindly. It's a touching character, the centerpiece of the film, and I was enchanted by Hayley Mills' open face and yearning smile. The other youngsters are also remarkable. If the film doesn't offer us fanciful answers, it does provide playful bits of visual humor. Even the rhythm of the kids' words is comical (and the way they relate to one another seems very natural). The film gives away nothing without an eternal struggle, and at the end there is no clear answer. I believe the next day would become routine for the children, they would go back to their basics. But Kathy has changed, and the convict has as well. Their lives intersected for a moment, and, though others became involved, they both learned something from the other about the need to believe. ***1/2 from ****

Hayley Mills excels in this understated, underrated movie juxtaposing the sordid criminal world (Alan Bates as a murderer on the run) with the innocence of children. Cleverly designed, perfectly acted (by all the children as well as the adults), pithily appropriate screenplay, believable accents (the setting is the Yorkshire moors in England), and a well-balanced, carefully planned production all combine to produce a mesmerising gem of a film. Already a star, Hayley Mills proved she was not just a pretty face and built on her impressive performance in Tiger Bay to create a moving character of budding adolescence, still trapped in childhood innocence and belief. The period of the early sixties is neatly conveyed, and Hayley Mills as Cathy creates a metaphor for the deeper layer of the film's message of the increasing social awareness and diminishing religious belief (despite the traditional Sunday School attitudes and practices) which was gradually bringing about the social change of Britain in the sixties. The story is well told, the drama is dynamic, the actors do a marvellous job and the film certainly deserves to be better known, if not least because it's an early example of Richard Attenborough's production skills.

Once in a while you come across a film that is perfect - and this film is one of them. It has everything - humour, pathos, skilled acting, beautiful cinematography and it deals with the deepest questions of human existence. I found myself alternating between laughter and tears. It seems to touch on deep themes which films rarely dare to nowadays - themes of belief, faith, and the meaning of love.

The photography of the bleak Lancashire countryside is superbly crisp, the facial expressions of the actors (especially Mr Bates) let us know exactly what is going on in their minds but subtly, in a way that is never seen nowadays in films where everything must be made explicit.The children interact entirely naturally and they are not merely credulous, but curious and questioning ('he's not Jesus, he's just some fella'). Some scenes are deeply moving, in particular when the children dance under a tree to the music of 'We Three Kings' in joy and praise at seeing what they believe to be their Saviour - seeming to sum up the deep, almost pagan connection between religion and the English countryside.

The film deftly deals with the changing England of the time. By the early sixties, mainstream Christianity had begun to lose its hold on the English people (this was the time of Bishop Robinson and the 'Honest to God' debate); the decaying, plundered church is representative of the decline in organised religion, juxtaposed with the 'true' faith of the children. The religious figures, however, are not pilloried as would be the case in most modern films - they are treated sympathetically. I particularly liked the look of awkwardness on the Sunday school teacher's face when she is asked a question about Jesus which she knows she cannot answer with any honesty, and which she clumsily sidesteps.

In many ways the film is an elegy for a lost England - an England where children roam the countryside freely, where the nearest telephone is half a mile away, and where children live in relative material poverty but with strong familial love, where the simple pleasures of life are enjoyed - playing in the open air, having a birthday party at home, or reading late into the night. The film could not realistically have been made even just ten years later.