The Cinematheque

“[An] unqualified triumph … Davies reasserts his claim on Liverpool with ferocity … [Yet] for all of its author’s irascibility, this may be Davies’s warmest work. It’s most certainly the funniest.”

Jason Anderson, Cinema Scope

The critical acclaim for The House of Mirth was cold comfort for Terence Davies, who went nearly a decade without another project realized: his first attempt at making Sunset Song was rejected by British funders, and other scripts, including a romantic comedy set in the fashion world, never saw the light of day. His only completed work during this period came via radio plays, and it is this sensibility that reigns over his sole nonfiction film, a scathing and completely unbridled memoir of affection and loss for his hometown of Liverpool. While Davies was granted access to various archives, this is in effect a film without the director’s most reliable tools of camera movement and illusion. No matter. With his rich intonation (somewhere between the stirring tones of a performing poet and the relish of a skit comic), Davies, parrying the burdens of history and memory, conjures a sense of life—enjoyed and denied—to match the wit, tension, and unexpected glories of his fictions.

“While its power and intensity suggest something more exalted, I suppose we must label Terence Davies’s newest work an ​‘essay film,’ which is a rather prosaic way of indicating that it’s filled with poetry and insight, arresting images and a polemical spirit of erudite anger and magical nostalgia.”

Noah Cowan, Cinematheque Ontario