The rise and fall and rise and fall of Liverpool

British cinema has never been known for paying due respect to its home grown talent in the manner of, say, its French counterpart, but the extent to which Terence Davies has been maligned and forgotten about is more than just a little bit shocking. After testing the waters with his fondly thought of Robert Tucker trilogy in the seventies and early eighties, Davies exploded onto a nearly non-existent independent British scene with Distant Voices, Still Lives, a film that would be all but consigned to the dustbin of history were it not for the recently revived British Film Institute. Critical acclaim followed, the cheques didn’t, and soon the former dried up, too: The House of Mirth and The Neon Bible, Davies’ attempted comebacks, were met with derision and indifference.

Now Davies returns once more, to cinema and to his early themes of regional identity and homosexuality, with Of Time And The City. Functionally, Of Time and the City is a collection of documentary and news footage about Liverpool through the ages book-ended by a few cityscopes Davies has recently shot himself, a obvious departure from his narrative films. It’s fascinating that Davies, who has covered Liverpool so often in his works, would choose this as a format to pay tribute to his home town, and a cynic might read it as an admission that Davies no longer believes he possesses the deep filmic understanding and masterful cinematic hand required to live up to his previous opera. However, this is no easy way out (or easy way back in) Davies has attempted, no cobbling together of old newsreels set to self-congratulatory narration and snobbish music. Somehow, he has managed to assemble the clips into a portrait of his vision of an evolving and self-renewing place, in the documentary style of Humphrey Jennings’ Listen to Britain. We follow the development of Davies and Liverpool through the desperation of the 40s and 50s, the hopeful innocence of the 60s, the working class nightmare of the 70s and 80s to the revitalised city of today, and you feel nothing has been left unsaid. This is a work that speaks for generations, and yet seems deeply personal.

If it is a visual poem, it is Larkinesque, and an angry one at times. Davies unsurprisingly turns his witty vitriol (witriol? One to remember) on the Catholic Church ("Pope Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and Clitoris the Umpteenth"), the monarchy ("the Betty Windsor Show") and the Thatcherite boot delivered to the working classes, but also attacks more unconventional targets. He speaks disparagingly about the rise of The Beatles, which to him represented the death of subtle songwriting (here I agree with him), and even admits he feels nostalgic for the Liverpool prior to its renovation. The illogic of this pining for times gone by is rendered impotent by a director so adept at capturing and reviving ephemera as Davies is, and we feel his opinions as though they are our own. His non-partisan integrity on these issues in the midst of the self-congratulatory Capital of Culture celebrations is nothing short of admirable. We have Sibelius, Bruckner, Mahler and The Hollies in place of John, Paul, George and Ringo, and instead of Patten, Henri and McGough, Davies quotes Marlowe, Houseman, Raleigh, Joyce, Shelley and Eliot. In a city that has long been so insular, defining itself by itself, this knitting of Scouse values and memories with universal writers and artists is deliciously refreshing.

At the tail end of a year where Liverpool has looked towards the future whilst Britain teeters on the precipice, this film was sorely needed, not just to document times that would have been more forgotten than Davies himself had become (perhaps this is why he feels such an affinity with pasttimes like going to New Brighton for a fun afternoon), but to reiterate the warning whispered by Distant Voices: the good times don’t last. But at least in the 80s, Liverpool was in no danger of forgetting itself. Can we still say that today? Hopefully, if this is Davies’ foot in the door rather than his career eulogy, yes. Technically brilliant, emotionally moving, Of Time and the City is required viewing for Liverpudlians, historians, political theorists, poets, philosophers and film fans alike.

Distant Voices, Still Lives

It's wonderful when you discover a cult classic for the first time. You ache for its undeserved low-profile, yet revel in the fact it feels so much more personal and intimate for it. Withnail & I (Bruce Robinson, 1986) is one of those films I loved so much I had to show it to my friends; others, like Demoni (Lamberto Bava, 1985) or Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell, 1988) I had to more or less keep to myself (anyone who's seen the latter particularly will probably know why).

I am unsure under which category Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davis, 1988) falls. Even compared to some other examples of cult films I've given on this blog, this is one that really fell off the face of the earth. For years I couldn't even acquire a second hand copy on VHS; really, "golddust" doesn't quite cover it. Thankfully, those lovely appreciative people at the British Film Institute have finally brought the film to DVD, complete with a booklet, interviews with the director, a theatrical trailer and so forth. The grauniad, of course, jumped on the bandwagon and now the film is finally getting some recogntion after years wandering movie wilderness, perhaps occasionally bumping into Hurlements en faveur de Sade or French Dressing.

But is it any good?

Yes, absolutely. In fact, I cannot think of a better film to come from these so humble Isles.

Distant Voices, Still Lives ostensibly chronicles personal memories of Davies' own working class family through the '40s and '50s, but truly this is a universal film. From the very first shot we know our perspective is in the hands of an extremely competent director, and the content of the film does not disappoint the formalism. Though like Angela's Ashes (Alan Parker, 1999) it portrays a class defecated upon by circumstances beyond their control, it isn't interested in whining, nor shocking the upper classes into action or shaming a government through propaganda like countless other films I could mention, but instead deals in facts presented naked, with a brutal honesty that sends up the chosen microcosm as just as faulted morally as their situation.

It isn't simply a film about class, but also gender. The women in the film are truly fascinating. Note the silence of the mother, the wavering sentimentality of the daughters, the headstrong bravado of the friend: all crumbling rocks against which the domineering men crash, (The males are, with a few exceptions, bastards) from Pete Postlethwaite's chilling and abusive patriarch to Michael Starke's (Sinbad~!) slothful waster of a husband.

And that's the most frightening thing about the film. This isn't simply a generation experiencing hard times, but a self-renewing purgatory to test Sisyphus. As children the women can't understand why their loving mother has married such a bullying scumbag, as adults they marry into the same breed. And they know it, too. The charcters' only release is song, which they crave like junkies seek heroin, singing to release themselves from the threat of complete mental breakdown. It is in this way that the film is the purest of musicals, using song not merely to entertain or as a stylistic choice, but to uncover truths about the world.














Of course, the stifling and claustrophobic social boundaries that families like the Davises suffered would have been broken down somewhat by the 60s and the advent of free love, social rebellion, and The Beatles, but this is still ten years away for the film's characters and seems like so much longer. And as Davis, having made the film in the 1980s, realises, it would be his hellish conservative vision of Liverpool that returned in a new form. If this makes the film sound like a depressing experience, fear not. Between the intelligent, often beautiful camerawork, urban-poetic characterisation, music and several key performances (Debi Jones as Mickie is an absolute treat), this film is wholly enjoyable. It also benefits hugely from an intellectual deep focus: the director is as conscious of the physical context of his film as he is the political and emotional, and therefore several presents in store for anyone who knows anything about the era of 40s and 50s Liverpool, including cameos from long forgotten favourite drinks from a wartime pub and The Futurist.

It's rare you get a film that makes you laugh through tears it's induced, but this is one of them, a brave, honest, intelligent, thoroughly interesting masterpiece from almost every angle.