Terence Davies (10 November 1945 – 7 October 2023) was an English filmmaker. 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 the literary adaptations The Neon Bible (1995), The House of Mirth (2000), The Deep Blue Sea (2011) and Sunset Song (2015). His final two feature films were centered on the lives of influential literary figures, Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion (2016) and Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction (2021). Davies was considered by numerous critics as one of the great British directors of his period.
Life and career Early years and education 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.Intensive Care, the autobiographical radio feature that Davies wrote and narrated for BBC Radio 3 (broadcast 17 April 2010) 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 secondary school, at the age of 11, as the four happiest years of his life.
After leaving school at 16, Davies worked for ten years as a shipping office clerk and as an unqualified accountant, before leaving Liverpool in 1971 to attend Coventry Drama School.
Early short films While at Coventry, Davies 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 filmmaking, 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.
First feature 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 and 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.
Radio projects and Of Time and the City 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. Afterwards, he wrote an original contemporary-set romantic comedy screenplay, Mad About The Boy, and an adaptation of Ed McBain's crime novel He Who Hesitates, neither of which were produced.
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 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.
In 2010, after completing Of Time and the City, Davies produced a third radio project, Intensive Care, a personal recollection of his youth and his relationship with his mother.
Later films Davies's 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 finally found financing 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. During this time, an attempted adaptation of Richard McCann's Mother of Sorrows did not come to fruition.
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.
In February 2023, it was announced that Davies was working on a film adaptation of Stefan Zweig's novel The Post Office Girl, though the project was subsequently abandoned due to a lack of funding. Davies said he was working on another script in September 2023, the month before he died. After his death, the script was revealed to be based on Janette Jenkins's novel Firefly, which focuses on the last five days in the life of playwright and composer Noël Coward.
Personal life and death Davies lived in an 18th-century cottage in Mistley from the early 1990s until his death in 2023. Davies was openly gay and often explored gay themes in his work, though he said his most serious relationship was with a woman in the late 1970s, and that he later went "on to the gay scene for a couple of months" before deciding he was also uninterested in relationships with men. In 2015, he told The Guardian that he had been celibate for most of his life, adding in another interview with the newspaper in 2022 that he would "prefer to be lonely and on [his] own" than to live a life he "couldn't justify" to himself.
Discussing the impact his childhood had on him, Davies described his father as a "psychotic" man who made him feel "terrified all the time", and that the years following his father's death were the happiest of his childhood. He stated, "The one thing I can't bear now is atmospheres. I can come into a room full of people and I can tell you who's had [an argument]. I always say: if I've upset you, just come out with it. If you cold-shoulder me, I instantly see [my father] sitting in the corner of the parlour and I'm a seven-year-old again."
On 7 October 2023, at the age of 77, Davies died of cancer at his home in Mistley.
Works Source, unless specified: Feature films Year Title 1988 Distant Voices, Still Lives 1992 The Long Day Closes 1995 The Neon Bible 2000 The House of Mirth 2011 The Deep Blue Sea 2015 Sunset Song 2016 A Quiet Passion 2021 Benediction
Documentary Year Title 2008 Of Time and the City
Short films Year Title Notes 1976 Children Also released in 1983 as part of the anthology film The Terence Davies Trilogy 1980 Madonna and Child 1983 Death and Transfiguration 2021 But Why? Ephemeral film produced for the Vienna International Film Festival 2023 Passing Time Produced for the Film Fest Gent's 2x25 project
Bibliography Year Title Notes 1984 Hallelujah Now novel 1992 A Modest Pageant collected screenplays
Awards and nominations
Year Award Category Nominated work ResultRef.1983 Chicago International Film Festival Best Feature The Terence Davies Trilogy 1988 Cannes Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize Distant Voices, Still Lives 1988 César Award Best European Film 1988 Locarno International Film Festival Golden Leopard 1988 Toronto International Film Festival International Critics' Award 1988 European Film Award Best Film 1988 Best Director 1988 Best Music 1989 London Film Critics Circle Award Best Film 1989 Best Director 1989 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award Best Foreign Language Film 1990 Independent Spirit Awards Best Foreign Film 1990 Belgian Film Critics Association Grand Prix 1990 Amanda Award, Norway Best International Film 1992 Evening Standard British Film Award Best Screenplay The Long Day Closes 1992 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or 1995 The Neon Bible 2000 USC Scripter Award The House of Mirth 2000 Satellite Award Best Adapted Screenplay 2000 London Film Critics Circle Award British Director of the Year 2000 New York Film Critics Circle Award Best Director 2000 British Film Institute Award Best British Independent Film 2001 British Academy Film Awards Best British Film 2007 British Film Institute Fellowship 2008 London Film Critics Circle Award British Director of the Year Of Time and the City 2009 New York Film Critics Circle Award Best Non-Fiction Film 2009 Chicago International Film Festival Best Documentary 2009 Australian Film Critics Association Award Best Documentary 2011 BFI London Film Festival Best Film Award The Deep Blue Sea 2012 Munich Film Festival Best International Film 2012 Cinequest Film Festival Maverick Spirit Award 2016 BFI London Film Festival Best Film A Quiet Passion 2016 Film Fest Gent Grand Prix 2017Dublin Film Critics' CircleBest Screenplay
See also List of British film directors List of atheists in film, radio, television and theatre Cinema of the United Kingdom Independent cinema in the United Kingdom
References
External links
Terence Davies entry in film director database They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
from timesonline.co.uk Terence Davies at Virtual History