Of Time and the City

[billy bentley]

Trence Davies "Of Time and the City" is playing for two weeks at the Film Forum. Any one at Britmovie seen it ? If so, what's the verdict ?

[theuofc]

Trence Davies "Of Time and the City" is playing for two weeks at the Film Forum. Any one at Britmovie seen it ? If so, what's the verdict ?

I second the question. Would love to hear comments if you've seen "Of Time and the City." The film is only 72 minutes long. I can get to it, but it'll take longer to travel to it than the film itself. so please give a yell if you think it's worth it.



Cheers,



Barbara

[billy bentley]

Must say I'm most surprised no one at Britmovie has seen or has an opinion about this flick ? Any one heard or read anything about it ?

[dave7]

Must say I'm most surprised no one at Britmovie has seen or has an opinion about this flick ? Any one heard or read anything about it ?

Plenty of info @ Google including short You Tube trailer.

[theuofc]

Must say I'm most surprised no one at Britmovie has seen or has an opinion about this flick ? Any one heard or read anything about it ?

Interesting interview with Terence Davies:



Interview: Terence Davies on "Of Time and the City" | Film News | Film | IFC.com



Interview: Terence Davies on "Of Time and the City"



Thursday, January 15, 2009 | 6:04 PM











By Aaron Hillis





Just because the Evening Standard once hailed him as "Britain's greatest living film director," doesn't mean that 63-year-old Terence Davies ("Distant Voices, Still Lives," "The Long Day Closes") can easily find funding for his audacious screen poetry; each new Davies work should be considered an arthouse event. His first feature since 2000's "The House of Mirth" (and an official selection at last year's Cannes Film Festival), "Of Time and the City" is a wonderfully elegiac ode to postwar Liverpool, the place of his birth and a source of memories alternately painstaking and droll. Over a haunting assemblage of '50s and '60s stock footage that seems too perfectly curated to have materialized from anywhere but history itself, Davies' theatrical basso profondo wittily narrates a stream of consciousness memoir -- including his first grapplings with his homosexuality and Catholic faith -- while eulogizing life as a mid-century Liverpudlian. Enjoying every word spoken from that mesmerizing voice of his, I had a chinwag with Davies about feeling alien in his homeland, a Greek god named Gregory Peck, and why he never cared for rock 'n' roll.





There's a great quote in the film I was unfamiliar with: "If Liverpool did not exist, it would have to be invented." Where did you hear that, and what do you glean from it?

Well, in the middle of Liverpool, there's the most wonderful building called St. George's Hall, the largest near-classical building in Europe. As you get in, there are quotes about Liverpool; one from Dickens, one from someone else modern, and one from a man called [Félicien de] Myrbach, whom I've never heard of, and that's what he said.





Liverpool is a very peculiar place in England. A lot of Irish people came over after the famine of 1847 and changed the local dialect, which was simply Lanarkshire. It became one of the most important cities, nearly in the world. At its height, in the late 19th century, a fifth of all world trade went through it. As a post-industrial city, it still had that kind of grandeur that a lot of Northern cities have. Huge slums, but a lot of grandeur. I suppose what [the quote] means is that even when you move away from it, it's still very much part of your imagination. When most Liverpudlians move away, and a lot of them do, they recreate that city as they remember it, and as they didn't remember it.









In another interview, you said that you felt like an alien when you returned home.

When I go there, everywhere is full of memory. Literally all over the city, I've got huge memories of what it was like before it changed. That's why it's foreign, because all the places I knew have been pulled down. For instance, where I had lived, just outside the city center, there were eight cinemas within walking distance, and that was without the eight in town. So there were 16 cinemas just in my area. When I went out to show the film there, the last cinema in town was closing down. It was the Odeon where, in 1952, at seven, I had seen "Singin' in the Rain," my first film. It really pierced my heart because I had my cinematic education in those cinemas, the ones that were near me. Every time I go back, something else is gone, and I think, "Oh, I remember that when it was..." So it's completely alien now, but then I also think that my country has become different. When you are a child, obviously, you perceive things with the intensity of childhood, as though this is the be-all and end-all of everything. Certainly, that's how I was. Perhaps it's just the quality of getting older. [laughs]









So your feelings reflect the sadness of what has disappeared, not so much the disappointment of what has been built in its place?

Yes, I think that's true. When I grew up, things changed slowly. They didn't change quickly the way they do now. You walk past a shop, and then the next week, it's gone and you actually can't remember what was there. When I left school in 1960, I was a clerk in a shipping office. There was a building in the center of town called Coopers. It sold food and roasted coffee, so you could always smell this wonderful aroma of coffee being roasted outside. I walk past now, and I think it's a clothing shop. But on the side of the building, there's "Coopers," and as soon as I see it, I smell the coffee from all those years ago.

There's something rather bland about modern architecture that doesn't have that feel of being unique. There were lots of little lanes in the business district of Liverpool called Tempest Hay or Leather Lane, wonderful little nooks and crannies which were still Dickensian. Now they've all gone, and nothing replaced them because they arose naturally from their architectural time, which I loved, and made the city interesting. Look at New York. You go down into lower Manhattan, where it's not on the grid system, and it's full of these lovely old shops which have those metal gates that opened up, and you fed the produce down into the cellar. That's what makes a city.









In the narration, you chronicle how you fell in love with filmgoing, but then seemed to fall out of it again. What ended the affair?

Someone once said that the best way to cure you of a hobby is to actually do it for a living. [laughs] Once you start making films, you know how they are made, that magic goes. Inevitably it does, except for the films that you actually adore. There are still films that I'm seduced by, and some of them are not great. By no means is "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" great, but it's well-crafted, and it's got two very dignified performances from Jennifer Jones and William Holden. I remember being taken to see that, and so that colors it. Whereas, when you see modern cinema, I'm aware of it being cut and acted. That's kind of deadening.

Also, what I just find unattractive about modern cinema is that you can say and show anything. The first thing that goes out of the window, the first thing to be sacrificed, is subtlety. Going back to "Love is a Many Splendored Thing," when Jennifer Jones goes to the cocktail party, there are four shots. In four shots, you know that she's going to fall in love with William Holden, which is very succinct. It's attractive because nothing overt is done. You supply not only the ambiguity, but the explanation of that ambiguity. That's what I miss. And I don't like violence because I had a very, very, very violent father, and I can't watch it. I just can't. It opens up too many horrible memories, but perhaps it goes back to just getting old. [laughs]





Your childhood thoughts and memories come across very nakedly. Did you experience any specific kind of catharsis by recording them on film?

I thought at one time, when I started making my films, particularly the early autobiographical ones, that I would reach some catharsis. But I haven't. All it has done is highlight that which has been lost. The implication behind that is, of course, sadness. But there's also an element of ecstasy, the fact of going to the pictures. I can't tell you, in this little accommodation called Merseyside, Gregory Peck came! In those days, stars were demigods. They didn't come to Liverpool, you know? [laughs] They just didn't. It was like someone coming down from Mount Olympus. He came the following year as well to actually go to the Grand National, which is the [horse] race. The streets outside were [overrun] with people just to see him. That kind of ecstasy is gone. You know, because we didn't know about stars, their private lives, and all that in those days. You didn't believe that these people actually existed. They certainly didn't go to the bathroom. They were far too sophisticated for that.









So if it's not catharsis per se, what is it you're chasing by recalling these intimate milestones?

I suppose it's made me say goodbye to Liverpool. It's a farewell. But it has also given me a wonderful sense of freedom because we were cutting it together daily. I was writing the commentary on a daily basis, and that's the odd thing, I never thought that this would come about. I can't explain it. My next one, which will be a comedy, I feel that I've now got that sense of liberation of being able to say, "Let's just go with it. Let's see what happens," which I've never been able to do before because I was so anally retentive. [laughs] I never thought that would happen. Truly, I didn't.





Speaking of comedy, one of the funniest moments for me is your dismissive, monotone dub-over to a Beatles performance: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." What is it about rock 'n' roll that you had no patience for?

It wasn't so much that I didn't have any patience for it. You must remember that I grew up at the end of that wonderful tradition that I called, I suppose, the [Great] American Songbook, that begins with Gershwin and goes right down to Cole Porter, who was still alive in '56. You know, he wrote the score for "High Society." It's poetry for the ordinary people, and that American Songbook is unequaled throughout the world. The very best of it is as good as Schubert or Mahler, any of the great song cycles. There were crafted, beautiful lyrics, and they expressed what people felt. In fact, I just have an enormous admiration for it now. [My feelings about] the rise of rock n' roll began with Elvis Presley. I was taken to see "Jailhouse Rock," and quite honestly, I was only 11, and I cringed all the way through it. I thought, "Doesn't he look silly? The silly twitching around, what is he doing?" Then I started to discover classical music. So that's where the change began. But if I found Elvis Presley pretty resistible, which I did, I thought the Beatles were even worse. I just found the lyrics banal. You know, "money can't buy me love." God almighty, that's hardly an insight, is it?

[ram4553]

Must say I'm most surprised no one at Britmovie has seen or has an opinion about this flick ? Any one heard or read anything about it ?

Had hesitated posting to say: I have every intention of seeing it at Film Forum and adding comments.



But I do, and will. Been looking forward to it for months.



I'm a Davies admirer. Started reading about Of Time and the City last year, in glowing reports from the Cannes Film Fest. New York reviewers have now praised it very highly. Sounds like rewarding time in the dark.



Loved the interview. Thanks theuofc!

[theuofc]

Had hesitated posting to say: I have every intention of seeing it at Film Forum and adding comments.



But I do, and will. Been looking forward to it for months.



I'm a Davies admirer. Started reading about Of Time and the City last year, in glowing reports from the Cannes Film Fest. New York reviewers have now praised it very highly. Sounds like rewarding time in the dark.



Loved the interview. Thanks theuofc!

You're welcome, Ram.... It's a fascinating interview, isn't it? Here is a series of comments, all quite good. I hope you'll report back, as will I if I can get to it before the schedule changes.



Best,



Barbara



IFC



Of Time and the City. 2008. Great Britain. Written, directed, and narrated by Terence Davies. This documentary, composed entirely of archival and found footage, explores the filmmaker's relationship with his hometown of Liverpool. Acerbic, witty, and deeply moving, the film was commissioned by the City of Liverpool on the occasion of it being named the first European Cultural Capital in 1998. Courtesy Strand Releasing. 77 min. "Of Time and the City" and Terence Davies.



Friday, January 16, 2009 | 4:44 PM















"In 'Of Time and the City, a new documentary by Terence Davies, the city is his hometown, Liverpool, and the time, true to form for this most Proustian of filmmakers, is the past," writes Dennis Lim, who's called up Davies for the New York Times. "'The golden moments pass and leave no trace,' Mr Davies, who narrates the film, says at one point, quoting Chekhov. But his backward-glancing movies are proof to the contrary. They consist almost entirely of traces, constellations of hallowed people and places recalled with an intensity that verges on the religious."



.................

"On the one hand, there are the hushed, shifting tableau of home and quilted textures of song in 'The Long Day Closes' (1993) - cozy yet beguiling sequences as all-absorbing and carefully appointed as the Hollywood productions that sent a fresh-faced Liverpudlian cadging a shilling from Mum 'to go to the pictures.'" Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine: "And on the other, there is his wrenching 'Trilogy' (1976-83), three compact shorts that, in late-winter-afternoon black-and-white, churn through school life, young gay torment, filial devotion, bondage and self-imagined future decrepitude.... One production designer has called Davies's style 'memory realism' - not life as it 'really' was, but as it lived on, preserved and cherished, in the filmmaker's mind (or, more truly, heart). The difference between Davies and the legions of directors who routinely claim something similar in press notes is that he succeeds."







Here at IFC, Aaron Hillis "had a chinwag with Davies about feeling alien in his homeland, a Greek god named Gregory Peck, and why he never cared for rock 'n' roll."







Update, 1/17: "Fiercely personal, Terrence Davies's trilogy of short films trace an arc from the helpless confusion and shame of adolescence, through the stultifying routine of frustrated adulthood, to the lassitude of old age and the encroaching horror and release of death," writes Anna Bak-Kvapil in teh Tisch Film Review. "Watching the 'Trilogy' is like going through the motions of an ordinary day of work, while preoccupied by the subconscious memories and desires that disturb the placid routines of daily life - the death of a family member, attraction to someone you passed on the street, old grudges and crushes. Davies isn't quite a fantasist, but he's not quite a realist either."





Update, 1/19: James Van Maanen on "Of Time and the City": "As beautiful to watch (and bask in its soundtrack) as the film is, it is also surprisingly angry, though this unique writer/director never raises his eloquent voice."

[theuofc]

Must say I'm most surprised no one at Britmovie has seen or has an opinion about this flick ? Any one heard or read anything about it ?

Billy Bentley:



What did you think of the articles on Of Time and the City? Hope they were of help.



All the best,



Barbara

[billy bentley]

They were Barbara, I hope I can see it before it goes but have a few "scheduling" conflicts. Will really try though !

[moonfleet]

I heard director Terence Davies speaking of his last "Of Time And The City", has anyone seen it ??....it seems to be about Liverpool .....





MooN.

[Maurice]

documentary film (72 mins), cert 12A, written and directed by Terence Davies,

released 31st October last year, distributed by the BFI.



reviewed recently in 'The Victorian' magazine by Richard Seedhouse,

the Victorian Society's administrator and film correspondent:



"If Liverpool didn't exist it would have to be invented." So claims Terence Davies

at the start of his enthralling film journey into his relationship with the city of his birth.



Davies, a noted director of widely-praised feature films such as LONG DAY CLOSES and

DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES has now turned his hand to documentary.



He assumes the role of narrator giving a very personal, sometimes contradictory, frequently humorous and occasionally angry view of a Liverpool which I suspect its tourist board would not be too pleased with.



The particular interest of the film to Victorian Society members is Davies's use of atmospheric black and white footage culled from a variety of film archives which, unless you have access to a time machine, give you the best chance of experiencing postwar Liverpool before, during and after the excesses of municipal redevelopment in the 1960s.



There are images of an age which have more in common with a late Victorian world than of today's European Capital of Culture. We see, for instance, women working in a communal wash house, in stalls like those found in stables, pounding clothes with washing dollies, and a rag and bone man with his horse and cart, scouring the streets, using a bugle to attract attention.



There is footage of the long-demolished Liverpool Overhead Railway (designed by James Greathead and Douglas Fox in 1889) and rows of back-to-back terraces with no cars or street clutter spoiling the vistas.



Also shown is rare colour footage of a disused and deserted Albert Dock (1846 by Jesse Hartley and Philip Hardwick) whose fight for survival was, of course, one of the Society's great early victories.



The film moves on to the 1960s and 70s showing the desperation of much of the redevelopment schemes of those decades - in particular the recently-built Ringwood estate which is highlighted as a 'no go area' , while good quality Victorian terraces were left to rot or face the demolition ball.



Davies notes that the "new cityscape is anything but Elysian". It's a pity that the Pathfinder schemes in Liverpool show that these lessons haven't been learnt.



Away from the architecture, we are treated to footage of the funfair at New Brighton where children are shown sunbathing "without the need of Factor 200 sun cream". Davies reminisces about listening to sporting events on a "smooth and brown Bakelite wireless in the shape of a Hovis loaf"!



He isn't too keen on the influence of the Beatles on the city, suggesting that, before the onset of Merseybeat, John, Paul, George and Ringo would be thought of as "a firm of provincial solicitors".



Even so there is some exciting footage of bands playing the legendary Cavern club. There is much about his sexuality and his religion, with Davies confessing he is a "born again atheist" but we do get to see Cardinal Heenan consecrating the Catholic Cathedral (1965-67 by Frederick Gibberd built on an earlier crypt by Lutyens).



All this to a soundtrack of Peggy Lee, Mahler, John Tavener and Ewan McColl's 'dirty old town' while Davies quotes from Joyce, Engels, TS Eliot, Housman, De Kooning and even Julian and Sandy from ROUND THE HORN.



The film ends with recent shots of Liverpool, and Davies trying to come to terms with a city that he no longer lives in. This is a film about his life, rather than Liverpool's architecture. He shows how the built environment is part of the fabric of our lives, and a part of what makes us.

[Freddy]

Have seen this twice, the first time I didn't get it, the second time it hit me.





Although the footage is of Liverpool, with about 85% being archival, this really isn't about the city, it is about Terence Davies and the people and area of Liverpool where he grew up. These are the people who lived in all our childhoods, in all our post war towns and cities. It is a film of black and white, and colour, and the narrative and rhythm of the film is filled with music, poetry and his own personal, emotional memory. It is, as he says 'a subjective essay' and it is wonderful.



Come closer now and see your dreams

Come closer now and see mine



The landscape of the childhood streets where he lived is black and white; it is of run down houses, children playing in bombed out streets, neighbours chatting, cleaning the step, of going to the wash house with their laundry and because of the sheer physical effort involved, the clothes of those too old or sick to go. The voice of the woman who tells of her father going back to sea eight weeks after her mother died and so at 14 having to bring up her two sisters 12 months old and 4 years old alone, but then gives thanks to God who has been good to her The old woman making up a fire in the kitchen, in her face and eyes you see her life.



I would have liked to have worked on

But they threw me out

because I was old

It's a sin to grow old you know



The colour arrives as they take a day out on the Royal Daffodil ferry, cross the Mersey and go to New Brighton. There the beach is packed with families, children playing in the sand, a beauty contest, men and women in their Sunday best using their one day off a week for a family outing.



These are the people of his growing up, these are the people he loved and admired, and you look at these images to a background of some heart wrenching music. Angela Gheorghiu singing Watch and Pray while people go about their daily lives and children play games in the school yard. Neighbours, their friends and children sitting on the doorstep drinking tea and chatting; the removal van going to a new estate of 60's tower blocks; a woman standing alone on a balcony; an old woman kicking a can out of a lift. All this to the sound of Peggy Lee singing The Folks Who Live on the Hill.



Terence Davies saves his narrative anger for the royal family and the church. The Royal family or Betty Windsor as he calls her, and the juxtaposition of the Queen's coronation with images of soldiers going to fight in the Korean War. The church where he knelt praying to God to forgive his homosexuality ' You who damn but give no comfort'. A guilt and forgiveness he could not extinguish until he realised that Christ and the Roman Catholic church was all a lie.



His visual anger is with the planners who ripped away the communities in many towns and cities. The old black and white films shows community, clean streets, people taking pride where they live, the colour film shows a 60's estate in the outskirts of Liverpool, graffiti and litter, and with it comes that sense of loss.



The final scenes are of the city centre and waterfront, newly built and newly cleaned, or as someone once called it 'the boutique-ifation of the docks' Here you get a sense of the regeneration of a once vast working environment and with it a different identity that the film-maker once knew.



Of Time and the City opens with Terence Davies voice



Into my heart an air that kills


From yon far country blows:


What are those blue remembered hills,


What spires, what farms are those?



That is the land of lost content,


I see it shining plain,


The happy highways where I went


And cannot come again.



The film ends with a view from across the river to the Three Graces on the Liverpool Waterfront and his voice saying farewell ,



'Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye'.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -



Watch and Pray Angela Gheorghiu













The dvd also comes with some great extras, especially Listen To Britain.



The making of Of Time and the City which is fascinating

Listen to Britain, an excellent classic wartime documentary.

A question and answer session

Illustrated booklet.