Walter

This short feature film, set in straitened postwar England about the fate of a mentally handicapped young man institutionalised after the death of his parents, was adapted from a novel by David Cook and memorably inaugurated Channel 4 TV's 'Film on Four' series in November 1982. It's a copybook exercise in bleak unvarnished realism, punctuated by moments of operatic violence and emotion, but what makes it special is its unsentimental tone of melancholy inevitability, and, above all, McKellen's perfectly pitched performance. (The film was amalgamated with its somewhat histrionic sequel, Walter & June, and retitled Loving Walter for its US release.) JPy.