Triple helping of Davies films
Britain’s Terence Davies has forged a career out of exploring the tumult of his childhood, growing up Catholic, poor and gay in 1950s Liverpool.
Now, Bay Area viewers will get a chance either to discover or re-enter the world of Davies, with the retrospective “Terence Davies: Cinema, Memory, Emotion,” which runs through Sunday, Aug. 27, at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. Three films will be screened: “Of Time and the City” (2008) in 35mm, “The Long Day Closes” (1992) in 35mm and “A Quiet Passion” (2016). His “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” which I mentioned last week, was shown Sunday, Aug. 20.
In 2007, when the city of Liverpool was celebrating its 800th anniversary, Davies was asked to make a film on the city’s storied history. He instead made “Of Time and the City,” a free-form love poem and a eulogy to pre-1960s Liverpool. He splices together newsreel footage of Liverpool, while narrating in a gravelly rasp on death, music, religion and what has been lost of the Liverpool he knew.
“The Long Day Closes” is about the cinematic and sexual awakening of a boy named Bud, modeled on the director himself. It’s one of three Davies films based on his childhood (the other two are “DVSL” and his trilogy of shorts from the late 1970s and early ’80s: “Children,” “Madonna and Child” and “Death and Transfiguration”). “The Long Day Closes” tracks 11-year-old Bud (Leigh McCormack) as he grows up in a hard-Catholic family in Liverpool.
“A Quiet Passion” is Davies’ latest masterwork, a biopic about American poet Emily Dickinson, starring Cynthia Nixon. It’s funnier and more buoyant than previous Davies films, despite the fact that it’s based around the increasingly isolated life of Emily Dickinson (who is given complex movie life by Dixon). Davies is the perfect person to make a film about Dickinson, since their work so thoroughly understands the thrill in creeping mortality.
Davies uses film as a way of capturing whatever the forgetting mind can recall before the memory dissolves. Prime example: There is a sinister staircase, usually the site where a woman is beaten by abstract patriarchal forces, which shows up again and again in the Davies oeuvre. It’s in 1988’s “Distant Voices, Still Lives” (Freda Dowie’s mum is kicked and smacked by Pete Postlethwaite’s dad near the staircase, which appears in the film’s opening two shots) and “Sunset Song” (the heroine’s husband marches up the stairs to rape her, without any “Gone with the Wind” pretense of romance). Stairs show up in all his literary adaptations and biopics, as a way of showing how the childhood traumas associated with the staircase never left Davies.
His work is informed by the pain and trauma he endured at the hands of his abusive father, the Catholic Church and homophobic school bullies, but also by the love and hope he saw in his mother, his sisters, Ella Fitzgerald and the movies. They are radical testaments of faith and strength.
“Of Time and the City”: 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25. “The Long Day Closes”: 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 26/ “A Quiet Passion”: 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27. $7-$12. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center St., Berkeley. (510) 642-0808. www.bampfa.org Raoul Walsh at the Stanford: Director Raoul Walsh takes siege at the Stanford Theatre this weekend, with two of his high-octane greats — “High Sierra” (1941) and “They Drive by Night” (1940). The films both star Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart in smoldering roles that defined their careers. They are directed by the tough-yet-tender Walsh, whose movies are filled with warmhearted jangle. The Walsh love at the Stanford continues with his masterpieces “Gentleman Jim” (TuesdayWednesday, Aug. 29-30) and “Strawberry Blonde” (Sept. 12-13). “High Sierra” will be preceded by the Looney Tunes short “The Foghorn Leghorn,” and “Gentleman Jim” will be preceded by Chuck Jones’ “Duck Amuck,” his magnum opus.
“High Sierra”: 7:30 p.m. Saturday-Monday, Aug. 26-28, with a 3:45 p.m. matinee Saturday-Sunday. “They Drive by Night”: 5.45 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Saturday-Monday. $5-$7. The Stanford Theatre, 221 University Ave., Palo Alto. (650) 3243700. www.stanfordtheatre.com