Terence Davies

Terence Davies (10 November 1945 – 7 October 2023) was a British screenwriter, film director, and novelist.

He is best known as the writer and director of autobiographical films, including Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), The Long Day Closes (1992) and the collage film Of Time and the City (2008), as well as literary adaptations, such as The House of Mirth (2000). Davies was widely hailed by critics as one of the greatest British directors of his generation.

Early years

Terence Davies was born in Kensington, Liverpool, on 10 November 1945, as the youngest of ten children of working-class Catholic parents. Though he was raised Catholic by his deeply religious mother, at the age of 22 he rejected religion and considered himself an atheist. Davies's father, whom Davies remembered as "psychotic", died of cancer when Davies was seven years old. He recalled the period from then until he entered boarding school, at the age of 11, as the four happiest years of his life.

Career

After he left school, at 16, Davies worked for ten years as a shipping office clerk and as an unqualified accountant before leaving Liverpool to attend Coventry Drama School. While he was there he wrote the screenplay for what became his first autobiographical short, Children (1976), filmed under the auspices of the BFI Production Board. After that introduction to film-making Davies attended the National Film School, completing Madonna and Child (1980), a continuation of the story of his alter ego, Robert Tucker, covering his years as a clerk in Liverpool. He completed the trilogy with Death and Transfiguration (1983), in which he speculates about the circumstances of his death. Those works went on to be screened together at film festivals throughout Europe and North America as The Terence Davies Trilogy, winning numerous awards. Davies, who was gay, frequently explored gay themes in his films.

Davies's first two features, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, are autobiographical films set in Liverpool in the 1940s and 1950s. In reviewing Distant Voices, Still Lives, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that "years from now, when practically all the other new movies currently playing are long forgotten, it will be remembered and treasured as one of the greatest of all English films". 

In 2002, critics polled for Sight & Sound ranked Distant Voices, Still Lives as the ninth-best film of the previous 25 years. Jean-Luc Godard, often dismissive of British cinema in general, singled out Distant Voices, Still Lives as an exception, calling it "magnificent". The Long Day Closes was also praised by J. Hoberman as "Davies'[s] most autobiographical and fully achieved work".

Davies's next two features, The Neon Bible and The House of Mirth, were adaptations of novels by John Kennedy Toole and Edith Wharton respectively. The House of Mirth received favourable reviews, with Film Comment naming it one of the ten best films of 2000. Gillian Anderson won Best Performance in the Second Annual Village Voice Film Critics' Poll and the film was named the third best film of 2000 in the same poll.

After completing The House of Mirth Davies intended to make an adaptation of Sunset Song, a novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon published in 1932, as his fifth feature, but financing proved difficult. Scottish and international backers left the project after the BBC, Channel 4 and the UK Film Council each rejected proposals for final funds. Davies apparently considered Kirsten Dunst for the lead role before the project was postponed.

In the interim Davies produced two works for radio, A Walk to the Paradise Garden, an original radio play broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2001, and a two-part adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2007.

The long interval between films ended with his only documentary, Of Time and the City, which was premiered out of competition at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. The work uses vintage newsreel footage, contemporary popular music and Davies's narration in a paean to Liverpool. It received positive reviews on its premiere.

Davies's next feature film, The Deep Blue Sea, based on the play by Terence Rattigan, was commissioned by the Rattigan Trust. The film was met with widespread acclaim, and Rachel Weisz won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and topped the Village Voice Film Critics' Poll for best lead female performance.

Davies eventually found finance for Sunset Song in 2012 and it went into production in 2014. In October 2014 the film went into post-production. It was released in 2015.

Davies's next film was A Quiet Passion, based on the life of the American poet Emily Dickinson.

His last film, Benediction (2021), tells the story of the British war poet and memoirist Siegfried Sassoon.

Personal life and death

Davies lived in Mistley, Essex. In an interview in 2022 he said that he preferred to live alone and had been single for much of his life, except for a heterosexual relationship in the late 1970s, "[when] there was still this attitude of: 'Well, find the right person and you'll be happy'"; he was subsequently uninterested in relationships with men, saying "I did go on to the gay scene for a couple of months and I thought, it's just not for me".

Davies died at his home on 7 October 2023, at the age of 77, following a short illness.