the long day closes (terence davies, 1992)

The only other Terence Davies film I'd seen was Distant Voices, Still Lives, which I thought enough of to suggest it would warrant a second viewing (necessary since I didn't much like it but felt I was missing something ... on the other hand, that was more than a decade ago, and I still haven't gotten around to a revisit). The Long Day Closes has an autobiographical feel, even though I knew nothing about the actual life of Davies. As I described Distant Voices, The Long Day Closes is "an intriguing combination of English kitchen-sink realism and near avant-garde stylings." It benefits from a concise, 85-minute running time ... more and I would have found it pretentious, less and I would have found it lacking.

What I called an intriguing combination comes in part from the way Davies offers up a realistic remembrance of a young boy growing up in mid-50s Liverpool, but the film is clearly bound to studio sets. Davies effectively recreates the Liverpool of his childhood, but he doesn't hide the fact of the recreation ... we applaud the way he nails Liverpool, not the way he uses actual locations. This makes sense ... the young protagonist is infatuated with movies, he may see his own life as a movie, and so of course we get a faux Liverpool that is better than the real thing. Except Davies doesn't pretty things up, which is why it seems of a piece with kitchen-sink realism.

I hadn't heard of anyone in the cast ... they are universally good, but their unknown-to-me status made them seem "real". As far as I can tell, this was the only appearance of Leigh McCormack, who has the lead role. (Apparently, he found acting boring and instead became a fireman.) The Long Day Closes rests on its gentle qualities, and I don't need to see it again to say that it's a worthy picture. #603 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time.