694 The Long Day Closes

[MichaelB]

It certainly wouldn't be personal any more. Terence Davies is one of those people like Alan Bennett - it's pretty much impossible to imagine their first-person material read by anyone else.

Oh, and the Blu-ray.com review confirms that Criterion's BD is indeed sourced from the BFI's James White-created HD master, as predicted above. I'd have been astonished if it hadn't been - there wasn't anything wrong with it, so there was absolutely no point doing it all over again! Same goes for the commentary, which I recommend unreservedly.

[Moe Dickstein]

Or Jean Shepherd

[FrauBlucher]

Let's hope this is not the last Davies in the Collection.

[whaleallright]

I hope that someone will see fit to put one or both of his radio plays (Walk to the Paradise Garden and an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's The Waves) on some home-video title. they are both remarkable, not least because they find Davies working in a much-neglected form that inspired much of his use of sound in his early shorts and features. Paradise Garden, about people living in an old folks' home, is probably the bleakest thing Davies has written, closest in spirit to Death and Transfiguration. unfortunately, these are nearly impossible to find. I got very low-Q copies of both, but it wasn't easy.

I probably should have written to Criterion about this before they released The Long Day Closes.

it also seems that Davies's quasi-autobiographical novel, Hallelujah Now, is out of print. that's also a shame. I wonder if Davies is embarrassed by any of these projects. he shouldn't be, but he's a very harsh critic of his own work.

[warren oates]

I'd love to hear those. The Waves especially, since it's always been my favorite piece of stream-of-consciousness writing. And for me, Davies' early films come the closest I've seen to translating this literary mode into purely cinematic terms.

[boywonder]

I have long wanted to see "The Long Day Closes" after picking up the odds and ends of Davies' career here and there, but never the meat (an adaption of an American novel,"House of Mirth", another adaption, "The Deep Blue Sea", and a very personal documentary, "Of Time and City".) I quite like each of these films, but was totally thrown over by this achingly touching, yet seemingly unsentimental personal dream of a film.

Of the two Proust films I've seen, "Swann's Way" and "Time Regained", Davies certainly has a firmer grip on memory as it relates to loneliness, childhood fear, music ... the many odd, small details formed at an early age that play upon us throughout our lives. Had Proust lived in Liverpool in the 1950's this film would be an English lower class version of "In Search of Lost Time".

There isn't more this film could do. It was a tightly wrapped time capsule that opened into the oddly wonderful lives of this more than ordinary family through its honest impressionistic vignettes ... well, it could have done more ... it could have been as long as Proust's masterpiece, without boring me for a single second. In all of its monochromatic, rain soaked dreariness, it is one of the most ravishingly beautiful looking and sounding films.

I wanna see "Distant Voices, Still Lives" tonight. Bring it on, Criterion!

[whaleallright]

FWIW Distant Voices, Still Lives cuts its nostalgia with much more brutality and fear than The Long Day Closes.

I just noticed that Davies's ballot for the 2012 Sight & Sound poll is composed entirely of films made between 1942 and 1961. In fact, the 1961 film, Dearden's Victim, is an outlier; without it the films would range from 1942 to 1956.

This should surprise no one given Davies's body of work, much less his interviews, but it's still pretty striking.

[Numero Trois]

And here's his 2002 Sight & Sound list. Cries & Whispers and Scorcese's Age of Innocence make the cut.

It's not that unusual for an older person to be alienated from modern culture, especially post-1962. But yes, his alienation does seem to be that much more pronounced than others.

[knives]

It's not terribly different though from Allen's seeming belief that culture ended in '73.

[hearthesilence]

A strong preference for one era doesn't mean complete alienation from modern culture, that's a dubious leap in logic. FWIW, I'm surprised he didn't vote for 2001, especially after taping this introduction.

[Numero Trois]

A strong preference for one era doesn't mean complete alienation from modern culture, that's a dubious leap in logic.

Well, in the strictest sense of the word of course its impossible to be completely alienated from modern culture. But after watching both The Long Day Closes and Of Time and the City (not to mention some of his interviews) its hard not to get the impression that Davies is more alienated than most.

It's not terribly different though from Allen's seeming belief that culture ended in '73.

Or Robert Crumb's for that matter.

[knives]

Though if you really want to suggest Davies as separated from modern culture you should probably point to how he wound up casting Rachel Weisz.

[MichaelB]

Though if you really want to suggest Davies as separated from modern culture you should probably point to how he wound up casting Rachel Weisz.

I can't speak for Rachel Weisz, but he cast Gillian Anderson in The House of Mirth without having the faintest clue who she was: he was using the paintings of John Singer Sargent as a visual reference, and thought that she was the spitting image of one of his models.

Naturally, he'd never even heard of The X-Files, and was rather surprised to discover that she had a substantial fanbase.

[knives]

As I heard it there was a similar thing with Weisz where he caught Stealing Beauty on television and thought she'd be perfect for the role, but was nervous about asking either his producer or agent because he wasn't sure if anyone had ever heard of her.

[whaleallright]

...

[shaky]

I must reiterate that it's very strange not seeing DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES come out before this. Perhaps, oddly, Criterion doesn't in fact have the rights to it? Would be strange.