Yesterday's Children

The book dealt with the reincarnation of Mary and how Jenny is compelled by the love and concern for her children felt the strong need to go back to her former family and how she finally brought the scattered family together. The film plays the reincarnation on a low key.This spoils the story and changes the full meaning of the main theme. The film ignores many important facts from the book.The book has a haunting grip on you and establishes many points in reincarnation. I cannot imagine Jenny Cockell allowing the changes that had been made to her story.

The priest plays a important role in the film whereas in the book he does not get involved in Jenny's research after the preliminary info. This does seem strange. The idea of Mary's spirit contacting Jenny does not get much importance in the book. I felt that the whole purpose of the book was lost in the film story. I do commend Jane Seymor on her moving performance.

Truly touching movie that will leave you in tears about an Allentown PA. career woman Jenny Cole somehow getting in touch with a long deceased Irish housewife Mary Sutton both sensitively played by Jane Seymour.

Jenny Cole getting these dreams at night and visions in the daytime about this women in Ireland back in the 1930's that become so traumatic that Jenny at the insistence of her mother Maggie,Clair Bloom, goes to a psycho-therapist Dr. Garrison, Stanly Anderson, to undergo treatment.

Put under hypnosis Jennys description of her life as Irish mother and housewife Mary Sutton is so profound and, what to Dr. Garrison seems to be, so accurate that the idea of reincarnation comes into mind even though Jenny is almost totally ignorant of that strange and unscientific phenomena.

Drawing a number of sketches of her dreams and visions Jenny sub-consciously drew a map of some strange town and when Maggie shows her a map of Ireland she without a second thought points out the obscure little town of Malahide. Later ordering a map of Malahide from her local book store the map of the town is exactly like her drawing of it! Jenny as well as her mother Maggie now know that the only way to cure her obsession of her life, before she was born as Jenny Cole, in Malahide is to travel to the Emerald Isle and find out the truth, if there is one, about her previous life as Mary Sutton for herself.

One of the best made for TV movies ever made that is also the best documented example if there is such a thing in life, and death, as the enigma of reincarnation. After a number of false leads Jenny and her teenage son Kevin,Kayle Howard,were just about to give up and go back home to Allentown when she's approached by an elderly man who knew her, as Mary Sutton, and her family when they lived in Malahide back in the 1930's.

"Yeasterday's Children" makes you into a believer even if you don't want to be one because it's so emotionally charged, as well as heart-lifting. The movie override whatever you disbelieved about the theory of re-birth to wanting it to be true just in order for the film to have the happy ending that it does not caring at all if the film is based on truth or is a work of fiction. Even the acting by those in the movie seems to be driven more by inspiration and belief then by reading ones lines and doing his, or her, best to make them come to life.

What an incredible story. This is an excellent TV Movie inspired by a true story.

Two ladies, different times, lifestyles apart, but on the same extraordinary and quite inexplicable wavelength.

This does have some quite harsh and brutal domestic scenes which really make you feel for the main character.

A truly fascinating and very emotional tale. Jane Seymour is terrific and I highly recommend you take a look at this one.

Seen on French TV under the title "Les Ombres du Passé", and now available on DVD in France for under 6$, this is a highly worthwhile purchase ! Picture quality is excellent, and the story itself send shivers down your spine at times and at other moments fills you with orgasmic joy. Acting is first rate and the Irish countryside is beautifully filmed. The final "reunion" of the film filled me with an undescribable sense of joy. The story, though in the domaine of the paranormal is highly plausible, and we follow with pleasure and anticipation Jane Seymour's research of her Irish Family. I would highly recommend the film to anyone the least bit sentimental and who at the same time is fascinated by things para-normal! Excellent !

This was a very soul searching film with great acting by Jane Seymour who played (Jenny Cole/Mary Sutton,"Touching Wild Horses",'02. Jenny Cole seems to have troubling dreams about a family in a small town in Ireland where a woman has to put up with a drunkard of a husband and a child abuser. He is told that his wife with lose her life if she has any more children and her husband is too busy drinking to really care. There is great photography in Ireland and former veteran actor Hume Cronyn,(Sonny Sutton),"The Pelican Brief",'92, plays the older son to Mary Sutton and gives a great supporting role. You will need some tissues to view this film and some belief in the Spiritual World!