"The child is father of the man," Wordsworth wrote. That seems literally true as we look at these films. The 7-year-olds already reveal most of the elements, good and bad, that flower in later life. Sometimes there are surprises; a girl who is uptight and morose at 21, vowing never to marry, blossoms in the later films into a cheerful wife and mother.

And consider Neil, who for most followers of the series has emerged as the most compelling character. He was a brilliant but pensive boy, who at 7 said he wanted to be a bus driver, so he could tell the passengers what to look for out the windows; he saw himself in the driver's seat, a tour guide for the lives of others. What career would you guess for him? An educator? A politician?

In later films he seemed to drift, unhappy and without direction. He fell into confusion. At 28, he was homeless in the Highlands of Scotland, and I remember him sitting outside his shabby house trailer on the rocky shore of a loch, looking forlornly across the water. He won't be around for the next film, I thought: Neil has lost his way. He survived, and at 35 was living in poverty on the rough Shetland Islands, where he had just been deposed as the (unpaid) director of the village pageant; he felt the pageant would be going better if he were still in charge.

In a way, I didn't expect him to be back for the next film. But the latest chapter in Neil's story is the most encouraging of all the episodes in "42 Up," and part of the change is because of his fellow film subject Bruce, who was a boarding school boy, studied math at Oxford, and then gave up a career in the insurance industry to become a teacher in London inner city schools. Bruce has always seemed one of the happiest of the subjects. At 40, he got married. Neil moved to London at about that time, was invited to the wedding, found a job through Bruce, and today--well, I would not want to spoil your surprise when you find the unlikely turn his life has taken.