The Railway Children (1970)

★★★★

Dir: Lionel Jeffries

Starring: Dinah Sheridan, Jenny Agutter

G 109M

This delightful adaptation of the popular children’s story from E Nesbit was recently voted one of the all-time great family movies and it’s not difficult to see why. The story of a London family transplanted to Yorkshire at the turn of the last century, it features beautifully observed performances from the likes of Dinah Sheridan, Jenny Agutter and Bernard Cribbins. Director Jeffries (himself a delightful actor) handles it all with a light touch, notably the classic sequence in which the kids are called upon to flag down a train heading for disaster. This charming movie is being screened at the IFI in Dublin on December 30.