RAILWAY CHILDREN

RAILWAY CHILDREN adopts the thematic elements of the famous early 1900 story, which was a novel and a 1970 movie, to a new adventure in the middle of World War II when children in Great Britain were put on trains to leave the big cities that the Germans were bombing for safer little villages in Central England. What could have been a very winsome, nostalgic movie is marred by some progressive preaching that places race above duty, demeans law and order and even stresses feminism.

The movie opens with the German bombing of the industrial city of Manchester. One mother whose husband went off to war and works at a bomb-making factory must put her three children on a train to a small English village. The little boy, Ted, doesn’t want to go; the middle girl, Pattie, doesn’t want to wear a dress which would help her be chosen by a local couple; and, the oldest girl, Lily, constantly dreams of her father leaving for war. When they get to the little village, all the other children (there are quite a few) are chosen, but the three children are too many and are left standing alone even after calling out to be chosen. Finally, a grandmother convinces her daughter, the head of the school, and her son Thomas to take the three children. When they get to their house, they’re put into a little room with a single bed and a crib. Lily argues the mother should get the single bed, and they should get the double bed in the mother’s bedroom.

At the school, many of the town’s children don’t like having this influx of refugees.

Thomas and the three play hide and seek in the railroad one day, and the middle girl, Pattie, is frightened when she finds a man sleeping in one of the railcars. He turns out to be a black American soldier. He says he’s on a secret mission. The three children, plus Thomas, bring him food and bandages for a wound he’s got on his leg. Lily finds out he lied to them, and he’s actually AWOL. To protect him, they hide him in a room at the house.

Meanwhile, military police are searching the whole town. Eventually, the Military Police arrest Lily and Abe and puts them on a train to prison.

How will Abe and Lily get out of this horrible situation?

RAILWAY CHILDREN has a moving plot until two-thirds into the movie when it no longer relies on emotive entertaining storytelling but starts to preach and plot holes appear. It’s true that all men are created equal, but it’s also true that deserters have always been punished, because they destroy discipline on the armed forces. Of course, up until the 20th Century, deserters were immediately put to death in front of the other troops, including during the Civil War. However, stressing the injustice to Abe, which the movie does not prove, the movie has several speeches pleading to the authorities to let Abe off, without any nod to the fact that he voluntarily joined the army and now has completely flaunted the discipline of the country he promised to obey in fighting National Socialism. Furthermore, when Uncle Walter, played by the great Tom Courtenay, says that Winston Churchill was a great man, the grandmother and the school principal says Churchill was a bad man because he opposed her and the suffragettes, which, of course, wasn’t considered bad at the time it happened.

At any rate, this could have been a very winsome movie. It only has two obscenities and one light profanity, with no sex and the very mild violence for a wartime movie. If the filmmakers had refrained from the political statements and given valid reasons why Abe would be excused, RAILWAY CHILDREN would have been a much better, winsome movie. As it is, the new RAILWAY CHILDREN movie requires a caution for older children and young adults because it implies that lying, cheating and irresponsibility are rewarded.