Terence Davies

[scouserdave]

More info 1

Writer

and Director of the movie Distant Voices, Still Lives. A really disturbing film about his Liverpool childhood. His brute of a Dad was played in the movie by

not quite Scouser Pete Postlethwaite Don't know if you could call the movie a musical, but there was music all the way through the film, I think

to portray an emotion or something that happened in a particular scene. It gets shown once in a while on the telly. I think it was on C4 a couple of years

ago. It's two movies in one, shot two years apart. Deffo a film to check out, but it's not a barrel of

laughs!

More info 2

[sweetpatooti]

I love those films - they're really atmospheric - the beginning where his mam is cleaning the windows and she is sitting on the window-sill

hanging out - like women do - and he is watching terrified in case she falls - it brings back about what frightened us a kids. I think they are masterpieces

and he just seems to capture the whole atmosphere. No I know they are not a barrel of laughs but when everybody is singing all the old songs I love it. It

reminds me of when we were kids and all the adults used to bale back from the pub with a crate and sing songs and eat chicken paste butties and drink

Mackies.

[Howie]

Distant Voices, Still Lives
The Observer, Sunday 30 August 2009
Article history

The relative scarcity of films by writer-director Davies - whether owing to lack of funding or the obstinacy of a vision that brooks no compromise - is one of the great tragedies of British cinema. His first feature, which traces the life of a Catholic family in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool, is widely regarded as being among the finest depictions of British working-class life on film. It is divided into two chapters: the first reflects the trauma of war and growing up under an abusive father, the second, the struggle of his children to achieve happier lives as they build their own marriages and families following his death. The film is bleached of primary colours so that the action unfolds largely in drab greys and browns, but is enriched by a backdrop of radio, film and musical samples that reflect the wider narrative of a city re-establishing itself after the war.

? Distant Voices, Still Lives; Terence Davies (1988), starring: Lorraine Ashbourne, Jean Boht, Carl Chase

Source: The Observer