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Terence Davies (1945 - )



"I do think that film is closest of all to music. Notes and chords on their own don’t mean anything. They only mean something when you juxtapose them with something else."

Filmography
Features
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)
The Long Day Closes (1992)
The Neon Bible (1995)
The House of Mirth (2000)
Of Time and the City (2008)
The Deep Blue Sea (2011)
Sunset Song (2015)
A Quiet Passion (2016)
Benediction (2021)

Shorts
"Children" (1976)
"Madonna and Child" (1980)
"Death and Transfiguration" (1983)

Books
Terence Davies: Los Sonidos de la Memoria / The Sound of Memory by QUim Casas, ed. (2008, SP)
Terence Davies by Wendy Everett (2004)
Terence Davies by Michael Koresky (2014)

Web Resources
1988 interview with Harlan Kennedy, Film Comment
2007 interview with Peter Fraser, Vertigo
2008 interview with Jason Anderson, CinemaScope
2009 interview with Leaonard Quart, Cineaste
2012 interview with Nick Pinkerton, LA Weekly
2015 interview with Andrew Pulver, The Guardian
2016 interview with Roslyn Sulcas, New York Times
2016 interview with Michael Koresky, Metrograph
2017 interview with Steven Zeitchik, Los Angeles Times
2017 interview with Matt Fagerholm, RogerEbert.com
2017 interview with Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader
2018 interview with Samuel Wigley, BFI

Forum Discussion
Distant Voices, Still Lives
694 The Long Day Closes
Of Time and the City
The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, 2012)
Sunset Song (Terrence Davies, 2015)

whaleallright wrote: Sat May 12, 2007 7:31 pm Is he working on anything at present? "Sunset Song" famously fell through. Long ago (the 1980s) he had written a script entitled "Vile Bodies" (not based on the Waugh novel), but nothing seems to have come of this, either.

Seems to be something of a forgotten man at this point, the recent BFI book on "Distant Voices, Still Lives" notwithstanding.

Here's hoping BFI editions of his major films are coming along.

Masters of Cinema have flagged up a July release on their Worldwide DVD Calendar:

Distant Voices, Still Lives
(Davies, 1988) BFI R2 UK

Has this actually been confirmed?

Not quite forgotten, as a packed NFT saw him receive a BFI fellowship last month after a screening of Distant Lives. He mentioned that he has 3 scripts in development (including Sunset Song) but nothing approaching a green light.
Unemployed for 7 years and then a bfi fellowship ! I'd like to think that the UK film Council that torpedoed Sunset would be shamed into self immolation but unfortunately that particular can of worms will continue to wriggle. See Terry Gilliam venting his spleen about that less than august body in the current issue of Vertigo too.

foggy eyes wrote:Has this actually been confirmed?

I can't confirm the date, but I can confirm the DVD. 100% definite.

Meant to add this to last post- article on Terence Davies discussing Distant Voices

Terence is a wonderfully sweet, deeply melancholy man and a great great artist.

When have things ever been easy for a great artist?

Terence is an awfully big fan of Victim.

Also:

Ever hopeful, Davies is seeking finance for a new script: Mad About the Boy (nothing to do with Noël Coward; he just likes the title). "It's a ménage à trois set in the fashion world in London and Paris: a contemporary romantic comedy, in colour and with a happy ending," he says, and laughs, semi-incredulously. "Who would have thought it?"

Oh that's just wonderful -- full of the sort of insights only Terence would have.

I'm rooting for his new project. So nice that he wants to do something light and gay (in every sense of the word) for a change.

I recently went along to a couple of films in the Terence Davies season at the NFT having not seen anything by him before and was very impressed.

I actually thought "The Long Day Closes" was better than "DV, SL"-much more poetic.

But here's the funny thing-the print for DVSL was new and remastered I believe but it was in a pretty bad state and I was pretty dissappointed compared with the quality of Long Day -which looked fantastic...anyone know the answer to that one ?

I actually thought "The Long Day Closes" was better than "DV, SL"-much more poetic.

I agree. It's my favorite of his films in that there's so much of himself in it.
The moment when he looks at the half-naked workman out of his bedroom window and realizes that he's attracted to him is a key one in the history of gay cinema.

According to this article Davies has been given a grant to make a new film.

More information here:

DOCUMENTARY Of Time and the City is written and directed by Terence Davies, the man behind acclaimed movies such as Distant Voices, Still Lives.

It is described as "a poetic, visual journey portraying Liverpool - the city of the director’s youth, and the much-changed city of today."

It will cover his life up until 1973 when he left Liverpool for London, and will combine aural and archive clips, music and poetry.

Davies, 62, said: "When I left the city, was a very down at heel sort of place, but I really feel the city is reviving, and with it, so too has my heart. I really didn’t expect that to happen simply by doing this film, but it has."

The project involves Liverpool producers Sol Papadopoulos and Roy Boulter, the pair behind last year’s film Under the Mud.

Roy Boulter also writes for Jimmy McGovern’s The Street.

It sounds an intereting project/idea

I like the quote "He is our greatest living film-maker. But the fact that, at 62, Terence Davies has only four films to his name is a national disgrace"

and it is a disgrace..I also like the phrase "announced as a winner" makes him sound like something from bloody X Factor.

It wouldn't happen in France you know...he would be lauded to the skies and rightly so...

Something stinks about the British Film Industry..

End of rant and on a better note BFI confirmed some further releases this year of Davies's work.

filmyfan wrote:I like the quote "He is our greatest living film-maker. But the fact that, at 62, Terence Davies has only four films to his name is a national disgrace"

I make it seven - Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration, Distant Voices Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, The Neon Bible, The House of Mirth.

Granted, the author probably omitted the first three on the grounds that they're not feature length - but as they rank amongst Davies' most powerful and personal works it seems mad to ignore them.

It's simply great that he'll be working again. Terence is one of the cinema's greatest poets -- right up there with Bresson and Ozu.

My local video store has a poor selection, but they did have "The House of Mirth" which I rented yesterday based on the comments in this thread.
I thought it was excellent and it had a much deeper impact on me than Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence" from the same author.
The downbeat tone, unhurried editing and ability of the director and lead actors to convey the tricky idea that wrong choices are being made by Lily Bart as she sinks out of the treacherous world of high society into something worse, all resulted in a viewing experience that was anything but downbeat.
I also thought the Terence Davies commentary was excellent. Proof that you don't need big money if you have big talent. That beautiful opening shot of Lily emerging from the steam belching from the locomotive - because of budget constraints, the locomotive was a wooden mock up! Sure looked good to me, as did the rest of the movie.

Has anyone seen the R1 DVD of Neon Bible? Amazon claims that the Fox Lorber edition is in 1:33 AR, whereas IMDB lists the film as being shot in scope at 2:35. How is the Fox Lorber transfer?

The Fox Lorber disc in the correct aspect ratio (2.35:1) but the image isn't anamorphic.

jonah.77 wrote:Seems to be something of a forgotten man at this point, the recent BFI book on "Distant Voices, Still Lives" notwithstanding.

Recently saw Of Time and the City. Davies was supposed to be there to introduce the film, but on the strenght of this film he has supposedly gotten some renewed credibility in the UK. As a result of that, he couldn´t make it to the screening. He was busy working on some new projects. A friend of his introduced the film instead. Of Time and the City is by far the best film I´ve seen this year, and it´s the only Davies film I´ve seen. Where should I go from here? Distant Voices, Still Lives or The Terence Davies Trilogy?

Edit: Found this terrific interview. He mentions two literary adaptations he´s working on. Sunset Song by Lewis Grasson Gibbon and He Who Hesitates by Ed McBain(!).

RobertAltman wrote:Of Time and the City is by far the best film I´ve seen this year, and it´s the only Davies film I´ve seen. Where should I go from here? Distant Voices, Still Lives or The Terence Davies Trilogy?

Normally I'd suggest Distant Voices, Still Lives as the entry point, but since you felt that strongly about Of Time and the City I'd recommend working through the films chronologically: first trilogy first; then the second one (Distant Voices / Still Lives / Long Day Closes).

The Neon Bible seemed like a terrible misfire at the time (almost like a weird, transplanted Davies parody), but I haven't revisited it since it came out. The House of Mirth is exquisite, and probably his most readily accessible film, but it's also uncharacteristic in several respects.

I was terribly disappointed by Distant Voices, Still Lives. It felt like an Irish Hallmark Card soap opera.

The first scene was amazing: the shipping forecast overlaying the voices of sons and daughters as the camera performs a 180 in a narrow hallway. And that was the best thing in the entire film.

Everything afterwards felt like a self-important Monty Python skit. Perpendicular shots taking on one life lesson after the next. Too pat, too easy--especially after Bill Douglas.

GringoTex wrote:I was terribly disappointed by Distant Voices, Still Lives. It felt like an Irish Hallmark Card soap opera.

Irish??? It's set in Liverpool.

How many Hallmark productions use formal experimentation?

I can see how this film often rubs people up the wrong way. I personally prefer Long Day closes which has more expansive character development. It seems that DVSL is ireedemable for you but I was quite taken by the little bfi monograph that has as a key starting point the quote -" We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is Memory".
Maybe that is still too trite but may help look at the film again more sympathetically (unless your ire rating is off the scale and no amount of smarmy sanctimonious quotes is going to do the business).
Although his new film/doc. 'Time and the City' has received plaudits it felt to me less interesting than most of the bfi's Transport fare. At least you don't have to listen to endless rhapsodising about being a closet gay teenager brutalised by Catholicism in the 50's in most of them.

I thought this was pretty funny.

Great stuff; thank you, John!

I just noticed that the BFI group on Facebook has quite a bit of participation from individuals there, and they seem very pleasant - like the 180 degree opposite of certain insiders, hah.

One of the most disappointing things I've heard is that their edition of Distant Voices, Still Lives has sold poorly, diminishing the likelihood of remastered Davies reissues. Given the film and the fact that it's the BFI in an edition meant for the UK market, that's incredibly heartbreaking.

Someone also brought up Of Time and the City - I didn't realize this, but a ton of SD material is in that film, meaning there'd be a limited improvement to the existing DVD. With that in mind I went ahead and bought a used BFI DVD I found online - bargains should be easy to find.

EDIT: Apparently Strand's DVD of Of Time and the City is a crappy PAL-to-NTSC conversion, so definitely track down the BFI edition, not unless you want to collect all of the various extras.