Bruce Pritchard (Malcolm McDowell) – a vigorous, healthy and randy young Northern lad with an enormous zest for life and a passion for football (soccer) and “birds” – is suddenly struck down by a disease he can’t even pronounce and finds himself paralysed from the waist down, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and suddenly alone in the world.
His mother and father cannot have him in their apartment and his relatives do not want him.
Resentful and bitter, he sets off for a nursing home for the handicapped in the south of England. There he finds he has nothing in common with the other inmates. He is sour, moody and disconsolate and his abrasive and cynical Northern ways are at odds with this genteel Southern establishment.
He spends most of his time alone writing poetry and stories, and it is only when he meets fellow patient Jill Matthews (Nanette Newman), a frail polio victim also in a wheelchair, that he starts to build his life again.
They fall in love and with the sale of one of his short stories, Bruce buys her an engagement ring and they begin making wedding plans.
“I’m much nicer as a cripple,” he tells Jill during their first tender kiss – the result of some difficult manoeuvering of their wheelchairs.
But outside forces once more deal a cruel blow to Bruce. Jill is taken to hospital with a cold and eventually dies.
In the van on the way back to the home he involuntarily wets himself. He is told it doesn’t matter. But to Bruce, everything matters now. “If I don’t believe that,” he says, “I’ve had it.”
Considering what a schmaltz-fest such a storyline could have produced, much of the film is admirably unsentimental. The relationship between Bruce and Jill is surprisingly honest and director Bryan Forbes (husband of star Nanette Newman) lets it speak for itself.
Released in some markets as Long Ago, Tomorrow.
Bruce Pritchard
Malcolm McDowell Jill Matthews
Nanette Newman Sarah
Georgia Brown Uncle Bob
Bernard Lee Rev. Corbett
Gerald Sim Clarence Marlow
Michael Flanders Matron
Margery Mason Bill
Barry Jackson Harold
Geoffrey Whitehead Terry
Christopher Chittell Bruce’s Father
Jack Woolgar Bruce’s Mother
Patsy Smart Dr Mathews
Norman Bird Mrs Mathews
Constance Chapman Geoffrey
Michael Lees Mr Latbury
Geoffrey Bayldon Gladys
Theresa Watson Celia
Sylvia Coleridge Hugh Collins
Brook Williams Arnold Foster
Richard Moore George
George Hilsdon Margaret
Nellie Hanham Alice
Aimée Delamain Gladys’ Mother
Anne Dyson Gladys’ Father
Norman Tyrrell Mary
Petra Markham Mrs Hetherington
Winifride Shelley Mr Thomas
Michael Nightingale
