Whistle down the Wind (1961)

From A Small High Window

Hayley Mills as Kathy Bostock

This is a totally unpretentious and very realistic tale of a group of children who discover a fugitive murderer hiding in their barn, and believe him to be Jesus Christ. The film stars Hayley Mills as Kathy Bostock, Alan Bates as

Arthur Alan Blakey, the man the children find in the barn, and Bernard Lee as Bostock, the film is based on the novel of the same name written by Mary Hayley Bell, the mother of Hayley Mills. The original setting of this grim little tale was in Sussex, but was relocated to North Lancashire after Richard Attenborough, the producer,asked Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse, the script writers to , in their words, 'northernise' it. The relocation helped immensely, making the film and the simple and delicate story it tells, more plausible by grounding it in a more gritty, harshly realistic setting, which given the look of this film, was all to the good. As a friend of the web serfs of this site put it, "this film simply would not have worked on any level had it been filmed in colour."

Cast: Hayley Mills (Kathy Bostock);

Bernard Lee (Bostock);

Alan Bates; Arthur Alan Blakey (The Man);

Norman Bird (Eddie);

Elsie Wagstaff (Auntie Dorothy)


Directed by	Bryan Forbes
Production Company	Beaver Films
Produced by	Richard Attenborough
Screenplay by	Keith Waterhouse
	Willis Hall
From an original novel by	Mary Hayley Bell
Photographed by	Arthur Ibbetson
Music Composed and Conducted by	Malcolm Arnold