When it comes to public information films combining haunted landscapes, imperilled children and uncanny foes, it's hard to imagine a concoction more impactful than Lonely Water (1973), but The Three Children, a little-seen gem from 1946, could give it a decent run for its money. Some twenty-seven years before Donald Pleasence's aquatic spectre took to haunting the airwaves of tea-time television, post-war cinemagoers might have been threatened by another dark shape with a penchant for unwary youngsters. The film's title sounds beguilingly reminiscent of a fairy tale, and indeed, its basic trajectory recalls that of Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel, where children who've ventured from the safety of home are tasked with navigating some forbidding wilderness and resisting the advances of affable strangers representing the most unspeakable kinds of dangers. It offers, though, an especially grisly sting in its tail, regarding both the nature of that wilderness and those most unspeakable of dangers. Although presented in an authoritative newsreel style, the narrative of The Three Children has the distinct vibe of a campfire story being shared by a puckish scout eager to unsettle a few of his fellow young campers before the witching hour sets in.
We are introduced to the titular children, who have been discharged from their houses on various missions, but who are linked by the same morbid destiny. Tommy has been sent out to collect a paper for his father, Susan is excited to be going to a party, and Bobby has been left to play out on his tricycle while his parents are having a lie down (hmm, is that all that they're doing?). The three encounter one another and enjoy a carefree romp upon a green, but as they enter a wooded area they're greeted by a strange gentleman who indicates their divergence into some dark unknown. The children are initially unnerved by his presence, but his kindly demeanour swiftly wins their trust. He asks if he might accompany them to where they're headed, and they accept; as they proceed, however, it becomes apparent from both the visuals and the narration that these children are most definitely going the stranger's way, never to resume their innocent errands again. The film cunningly evokes one parental nightmare, the fear of child abduction, only to reveal that quite another is taking place below the surface. These three children, the narrator tells us, are THE three children. The three children killed on the roads every day!
No context is given for that grim statistic, so I couldn't tell you if it applied to children in Britain as a whole, in the London area, or just in Wanstead and Woodford, whose road safety committee produced the film and presumably intended it for exhibition in local cinemas. There is some mystery surrounding the film's creation - it is unknown who the BFU cited in the credits were, although Josephine Botting, writing for the BFI media release Short Sharp Shocks Vol. 2, speculates that they were likely the Blackheath Film Unit, who made a variety of safety shorts in the late 1940s. Despite its extensive immersion in a child's eye-view of the world, filled with excitement, time for idle play and no shortage of dark mystery, children were evidently not the intended recipients of The Three Children; the closing tagline "Child safety is YOUR responsibility" makes it clear where the blame for the implicit tragedies should be apportioned. The absence of adult oversight is a common factor in all three scenarios, with the children's parents at most lurking upon the narrative sidelines to wish them well on their adventures. Tommy's father is seen standing at the doorway as Tommy sets out on his ill-fated errand, while Susan's mother lavishes her with affection as she is putting on her party dress, but as soon as the children have set foot outside they are left to find their own way. However well-intentioned these adults might be, they share in their offspring's naivety as to what lies beyond their doors, fatally overestimating their capacity to handle those unforeseen perils and setting them up for disaster. (Meanwhile, Bobby's parents, who come off as the most outright negligent, prioritising their own relaxation above their son's wellbeing, are not seen at all.) The strange gentleman who crosses their paths is that most sinister of figures - the adult who will happily take charge of impressionable children wherever parental supervision has failed them. In this case that figure just so happens to be Death itself.
Given the symbolic nature of the threat he presents, there are multiple ways of interpreting what is going on in that climactic encounter. It could be that the children are, unbeknownst to themselves, already dead when they meet with one another upon the green, with the gentleman being the reaper who's come to meet their ghosts and to lead them into the great beyond. Lending credence to this reading is that none of the people roaming the background of the green take any notice of the three protagonists. The sequence in question might also be an entirely allegorical one, with the gentleman representing the impending risk of death on the road, and the children's inability to recognise the danger they are in indicating the precise moment at which their fates are each sealed. Whether the murky, desolate wood they venture into is a literal a gateway to the netherworld, or a reflection of how critically far they are from the security of home, it has a dream-like aura that stands in direct contrast to the grounded urban sequences that established the characters. As the gentleman leads them into the distant horizon, they are taken ever further from the safety of civilisation, becoming increasingly smaller and uncannier figures that are seemingly claimed by the uncultivated landscape. While alarming, there is something eerily hypnotic about this set-piece; we feel that we've slipped suddenly from the mundane streets of East London and into a hidden fantasy realm, as enigmatic as it is chilling. It seems so disconnected from where our story began that it perfectly disguises the fiendish twist - that the familiar urban world is where the danger in question always lay. The narrator's final denouement brings us back down to earth with a vigorous thud, as the closing shot of Bobby's mangled tricycle illustrates in the starkest possible terms what has actually transpired.
The Three Children is a stellar example of how a road safety message can be delivered without any onscreen violence, with that forlornly spinning tricycle wheel being as close as we get to the gruesome reality (the spinning notably stops before the fade-out, further emphasising that time has run out for its callow owner). Perhaps the most distressing implication is in the declaration that the demise of Tommy, Susan and Bobby should be seen as representative of a process that repeats itself every day, suggesting a cyclic nature to their macabre story. Being left to envision the individual fates that would have befallen each child is upsetting enough in itself, but is exacerbated by us also being left to envision the gentleman showing up each day like clockwork to the claim the souls of three children, who might as well be Tommy, Susan and Bobby all over again, headed for some important or exciting business that will never be. Their journey appears to stretch out into infinity, with the narrator stipulating that their only recourse is to keep moving onward through a darkening terrain. No bright future lies before them, only the grimness of inevitability.
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