The plot follows the lives of three Lancashire farm children who discover a fugitive hiding in their barn. The bearded man, referred to as "Blakey" by the police, is mistaken for Jesus Christ by the children, who are influenced by stories they have heard at Sunday school. The fugitive makes no attempt to correct their mistake, especially when he discovers the eldest child, Kathy, is determined to protect him from discovery by the local police. We learn from a poster that he is wanted for murder.
Most of the children in the nearby small town eventually become aware that "Jesus" is living in the barn, complicating Kathy's attempt at keeping it a secret. When the news finally reaches an adult, Kathy's father, the police are called in to apprehend the criminal.
The children of the village, perhaps 100 of them by now in on the secret, converge on the barn. Convinced that she has let Jesus down, Kathy sneaks behind the structure and apologizes to Blakey that she can no longer protect him. He forgives the girl and, after much prompting from Kathy, promises she will see him again. Resigned to his fate, Blakey tosses his revolver out of the barn door and surrenders to the police.
Once Blakey is taken away and the crowd disperses, Kathy is approached by two very young children who ask to see Jesus. She tells them that they missed him this time, but he will be back one day.
The film contrasts the children's innocent faith with the pragmatic and suspicious adults in the town. Heavy in allegory, many of the characters and events parallel those found in historical Christian literature. In one scene, a child is mocked and beaten into denying he had seen Jesus. After the boy's third denial, a train whistle is heard (representing Peter's denial in Luke 22). The strains of 'We three kings' can be discerned in the score as Kathy, her brother and sister march with the food 'gifts' they have acquired for the man in the 'stable'. They are spotted and followed by a group of country children (shepherds). The early core of children who are in on the secret number a dozen and are specifically called The Disciples in the cast list. The secret comes out at the end of a children's party/Last Supper. When the apprehended Blakey is being frisked by police, his posture, with arms outstretched to his sides, is a clear reference to the Crucifixion.
Bryan Forbes put the budget at £162,000 although other sources say it was lower.
But, it was almost purely by chance that the film ended up being set in Lancashire at all. Mary Hayley Bell’s novel had originally based the action in Sussex, but producer Richard Attenborough asked screenplay writers Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse to ‘northernise it’. A Pinewood Studios accountant from Burnley, John Hargreaves, tipped off the filmmakers that Downham would be ideal. After being persuaded to visit, Attenborough said: “It fits the mood perfectly. Rugged countryside, which is grotesque, yet has beauty. Everything we want is here.”
“Bunter (Richard Attenborough) and I were searching for a suitable project with which to follow ‘The Angry Silence’. It was Bunter’s idea that we should purchase the screen rights to Mary Hayley Bell’s novel Whistle Down The Wind. Hayley Mills had just scored a notable success in her screen debut, acting alongside her father in ‘Tiger Bay’. Disney had signed her to a long-term (but not exclusive) contract and she had been to Hollywood to make ‘Pollyanna’ and ‘The Parent Trap’. She had, of course, a very special quality, being a child star devoid of the usual nauseating precociousness and audiences were flocking to see her. Whistle Down The Wind had, at it’s core, a fascinating premise, difficult to translate into a film, but sufficiently challenging to make us want to attempt it, and certainly capable of providing Hayley with a completely different star role.
Bunter went to work with his usual determination and flair, treading the thorny path between friends and business. He commenced negotiations with the Mills’ agent, Laurie Evans and using the resources of Allied Film Makers was able to secure the rights. The next hurdle was to sign Miss Mills to a contract.
We had privately agreed that I should direct the next Beaver film, a decision for which the outside world was totally unprepared. When we mentioned our intentions to Laurie over lunch we failed to detect any change of expression in his mandarin eyes,
We were congratulating ourselves in the office an hour or so later when we received a hand delivered letter from Laurie. In it he informed us that Hayley was such a valuable property that she could not be entrusted to an unknown quantity such as me. The Mills family reserved the right of director approval and with no malice aforethought they found themselves unable to approve me. A list of acceptable directors was appended headed by David Lean as I recall, the majority of whom were way beyond our financial resources. Guy Green’s name was listed amongst the chosen people and it was he we finally put forward for the benediction.
I suppose, at the time, it was the most crushing blow I had ever experienced. Looking back I can appreciate Johnny and Mary’s concern for Hayley’s professional future, but when one is convinced on one’s own ability, however untested, the thunderbolt of disappointment splits the ego like some rotten oak. I was totally incapable of concealing my hurt and reacted with stupid, if understandable, anger. I announced that in the circumstances I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the project. I declined to write the screenplay, thus further injuring myself. Bunter pleaded nobly, but in vain. I was adamant. If I wasn’t good enough in one category, then presumably I was inferior in all categories and the whole thing could go ahead without me. Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse were contracted to write the screenplay, an inspired choice as it turned out for their invention could not have been bettered.”
We flew to a snowbound New York, together with Sheila (Sim) and Bunter, for the American opening of ‘The Angry Silence’ We returned home four days before Christmas to face another crisis. Guy Green informed us that he had been offered the direction of a film starring Olivia de Havilland at a much enhanced fee and asked if we would release him from his contract for Whistle Down The Wind. There was no point in standing in his way and we wished him well, but it left us facing bankruptcy. By now Willis and Keith had finished the first draft of the screenplay, the key technicians had been engaged and were already at work preparing the location, but without an approved director we could not proceed.
My previous hurt having receded with the passing of time, I felt bold enough to suggest that we made another attempt with the Mills family to get them to accept me as a director.
Bunter, as usual, was ahead of me. “I’ve already prepared the ground,” he said. “Let’s go now.”
For some reason that I have forgotten, we drove to Cowden in separate cars – perhaps we felt the arrival of two Bentleys would be more impressive for the occasion.
I have no clear recollection of our dialogue that evening. Only Johnny, Mary and Hayley were present and they listened while Bunter filibustered on my behalf. I am quite sure that he brilliantly exaggerated such talents as I then possessed. Indeed, it was the first of many occasions when I have felt that he has been sidetracked from his true vocation in life. Always the optimist where I am the pessimist, he would have made a superb politician.
Johnny and Mary reacted with typical generosity. Johnny eased the cork from a bottle of champagne and said,” Sod it, Mary, we can’t let the chums go to the wall and I’m sure Forbesey will make a smashing film.”
We charged our glasses and drank to each other, all of us very emotional and conscious, being actors, that the scene had been worth playing. We finished the bottle and another before Bunter and I departed into the night.
We stopped our cars a few miles down the road and got out to discuss the dramatic change of events.
“Well, you’re directing, Bunter said.
“Yes”
“D’you think you can direct?”
“God,” I said, “it’s a bit late to think about that. I suppose I’ll bloody well have to.”
“The children I had selected from local schools proved to be exceptionally receptive to direction. I had taken a calculated risk from the beginning and apart from Hayley none of them were ever given a script. I wanted to avoid the trap of them ‘acting’ what could have been a sentimental, not to say banal, story by having too much awareness of what they were saying and doing. I therefore kept rehearsals down to a minimum and tried to give the children parallel and more easily acceptable illustrations, bullying them in a light-hearted manner. They responded to authority. I found, as long as I kept them amused. Beyond a certain point they became bored and one can understand why – at that age (and most of my cast were between eight and ten) making a film is not a matter of life and death. They enjoy it, of course, but the novelty soon wears off and they don’t have any professional fears or discipline to sustain them.
I also found that the crew and I had to be ultra-proficient in what we were doing – for the first reaction of a child is usually the truest, and if you aren’t ready with lights and camera to capture that split second look or instinctive turn of the head, then subsequent attempts obey the law of diminished returns.
For six days a week, life consisted of sleep and hurried meals. As soon as we arrived back from the location I fell into a hot bath, dressed hurriedly, snatched a meal, then went to the local Odeon where, after the normal performance ended, we screened the previous day’s rushes. Then back to the hotel for the next day’s work, the schedule constantly being rearranged and adapted to take into the account the changing moods of the elements.
Bunter, although beset with problems, could always blot them out the moment his head touched the pillow. We were like some dotty, querulous married couple in our penthouse, arguing as to who should shave first in the morning (I relinquished the single basin to Bunter and grew a beard It gave me an extra fifteen minutes in bed and helped keep out the cold.) or who should turn out the lights. Bunter’s ability to fall asleep within seconds filled me with an unreasonable anger. I could ask him an important question concerning the following day’s work, he would get as far as framing the first words of his answer and then fall fast asleep in mid- sentence. We only had one serious difference of opinion that I can remember, an isolated shouting match about some relatively unimportant detail which we conducted away from the crew, standing in a pig sty up to our knees in pig shit. At the height of the row we both became conscious of our ludicrous surroundings and broke up, the quarrel dissolved by hysterical laughter”
“Given the eleventh hour atmosphere, I have never ceased to be amazed at the ease with which the film went together. Most of the credit for the smoothness of the production must go to Bunter (Richard Attenborough) for he left nothing to chance and certainly no director embarking on his first film could have had more loyalty and co-operation from his crew. Arthur Ibbotson was again the cameraman and when, on an early location hunt, I confided that I was none too sure of myself, he immediately gave me the best technical advice I have ever had. ‘There are no rules’ he said, ‘or if there are, you can always break them.’
It was somehow fitting that the first actor I ever directed was Norman (Bird). I had cast him in the role of the farm labourer, and since we were shooting in strict continuity for the opening weeks of the schedule, he started the film.
I had done my homework as best I could and the night before shooting began I drove out to the bleak location and paced the next day’s work. We were staying at the Keirby Hotel in Burnley. Bunter and I occupied one or two penthouse suites, named Chattox and Demdike after the Witches of Pendle Hill. The farmhouse location was close to Pendle and it took us some forty minutes to drive from the hotel to the location.
When the actual moment came on the first day I found that I had completely lost my voice and was unable to say ‘Action’. Instead I tapped Norman on the shoulder (my opening short allowed this for he made his appearance from behind the camera). It was an emotional moment for both of us. He seemed to do it perfectly the first take, but I felt it might seem a little pushy if I settled for only one take on the first shot of my first day. I congratulated Norman and told him the reason I wanted to go again was to have an ‘insurance’ take. The second attempt was cut halfway for some technical reason and I therefore had to go a third time. Norman’s performance hadn’t varied so, finding my voice again, I said ‘Fine, print it.’ And walked away in what was I hoped a confident manner to the location for the second shot.
Penny Daniels, my brilliant and devoted continuity girl, followed me and whispered discreetly, ‘Which one?’ I didn’t grasp what she was talking about. ‘You had three takes,’ she said, ‘and all you said was print it. Which take do you want to print?’ ‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘Well, the second one was useless, better print the first and the last. Is that all right?’ ‘You’re the boss,’ she said, and I think that was the moment when I realised that the film was actually mine.
The date was 13 February.
The first rushes when I saw them disappointed me and I asked Bunter if I could reshoot the opening sequence. He had the courage to agree.”
from Bryan Forbes – Notes For A Life - 1974
“I am often asked how I found the extraordinary collection of small children for Whistle Down The Wind and the answer is, it was surprisingly easy. Most children are natural actors who give instinctive reactions to dramatic situations providing that they are not allowed to get bored. A greater part of filming involves a high degree of boredom for the players, and if, like children, they don’t possess any technique to surmount the inevitable repetition, a director has to make it into a game for them.
My partner, Richard Attenborough, and I decided that, with the exception of Hayley Mills, who was then the number one box office star, we would only cast unknown children. So I journeyed to Clitheroe and got permission to sit in the classroom of the local schools, the better to observe a number of children. Hayley’s younger brother and sister were two vital roles that had to be cast and after a week of taking stock my critical eye fell on a remarkable little boy called Alan Barnes who was aged seven going on thirty-seven.
Choosing my moment, I got chatting with him, and then finally said, “Would you like to be in my film?”
“I’m not bothered, “he said, fixing me with a beady eye, and I knew I had found my leading man.
Together with Diane Holgate, the young girl who played his sister, he proved to be a scene stealer, giving a quite remarkable performance for somebody of such tender years. Of course, I had to resort to bribes on occasions, but my method of avoiding the boredom factor was, with the exception of Hayley, never to let the children see an actual script. Since the plot revolved around a group of children mistaking a murderer on the run for Jesus, I was determined that none of my small cast started ‘acting’ a religious fable. I was tiptoeing across the thin ice of sentimentality throughout and scared of allowing the film to sink into bathos. So instead I fed them small pieces of the story at a time, always careful to give them a parallel situation they could relate to. We never had any long rehearsals, though as they became more accustomed to the demands of filming, both Diane and Alan proved capable of conveying great subtleties and sustaining lengthy dialogue scenes. In fact, all the children were superb and never cost me any lost time. The only thing that they all hated was still having to attend school for a number of hours a day. In order to comply with the law we built a wooden school hut on the location and employed several teachers. Losing part of the cast every few hours made for a difficult schedule, but the film was completed for the now unbelievable sum of £162,000 and proved to be the most profitable and popular one I ever made. “
from Bryan Forbes – A Divided Life 1992
The script was based on a novel of the same name by Mary Hayley Bell, and her daughter, Hayley Mills, played the leading role. Alan Bates, in his first starring film role, played the man in the barn. Local schoolchildren from the villages around Burnley and Clitheroe, Lancashire were used as extras and in particular children from Chatburn Primary School played the "disciples" in the film. The theme music from the film, by Malcolm Arnold, became a classic.
The film had its World Premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square on July 20th 1961. It played there for 3 weeks ending its run on August 9th, three days after it began its general release in the London area. The film was popular at the box office, being the 8th most popular movie at the UK box office in 1961 and was nominated for four BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards.