One of Arnold's personal favorites among his dozens of film scores is that for the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind. Directed by Bryan Forbes, the film tells the story of the encounter between three young children who live on a farm in Lancashire, and a murderer, Arthur Blakey (played by Alan Bates). On the run from the authorities, he hides in the children's family's barn and falls asleep. They find him, and on awakening he mutters "Jesus Christ." The impressionable children, raised in a very religious home, take Blakey to be Jesus himself and try to hide him.

For this allegorical story, Arnold created just over half an hour of music for a small orchestra, including a string quartet and unusual instruments like the harmonium, celesta, chimes, guitar, and human whistling (done in the original soundtrack by the film's producer, Richard Attenborough). In expressing his satisfaction with the score, Arnold said that the music was "simple, sentimental, and helps the film." The delicate opening music, emphasizing bright textures such as flute, harp and vibraphone, effectively evokes the fanciful world of the children. This leads into the film's main theme, heard at first in a laid-back, almost jazzy form. Arnold later uses a march-like version of the famous carol "We Three Kings of Orient Are" to symbolically connect the three children's relationship with the murderer Blakey to that of the Magi and Jesus. At the end of the film the main theme becomes more atmospheric, creating a mood of quiet melancholy as the children sadly watch their "hero" taken away by the police.

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