Analysis:

Mary Hayley Bell, wife of actor John Mills, used their three children Hayley, Juliet and Jonathan as the inspiration for the main characters in her 1957 novella Whistle Down the Wind.

It was probably inevitable that the film version directed by Bryan Forbes in 1961 would star Hayley Mills: not only was she at that point the most popular child star in the world, but the film's producer Richard Attenborough was also a good friend of the family. In it she gives perhaps her subtlest and most naturalistic performance, although Alan Barnes, playing her brother Charles, steals every scene he's in.

Originally set in Sussex, the story was relocated to North Lancashire after Attenborough asked writers Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse, in their words, to 'northernise' it. This helps to make the simple and delicate story more plausible by grounding it in a more harshly realistic setting.

But the more overtly Christian parallels, such as the playground denial of Christ and the stranger standing in the shape of the cross while being searched, are less well integrated.

Read the full analysis on BFI Screenonline.