Thankfully at least one reviewer was able to see through the sentimental nonsense spouted about this film:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/arts/2008/10/31/bftimeandcity131.xml
This film was second rate archive footage spoiled by a pompous narration. Ignore my remarks if you are either, a hopeless nostalgic with an irrational hatred of the monarchy, or, a member of Terence Davies' family.
Are you serious? That review is completely incompetent. Sandhu's dismissive attitude towards Davies' earlier films only shows his own lack of critical ability. It was not for nothing that Jean-Luc Godard singled out Davies and "Distant Voices, Still Lives" as the greatest British director and British film of their generation.
What is more, Sandhu clearly paid no attention to the film he was supposed to be reviewing. I am not sure what is supposed to be "cliched" about showing the destruction of the slums and the building of the high-rises to the tune of "The Folks Who Live on the Hill". Is he suggesting that someone has done that before? I am also not sure why he thinks the film is sentimental. Is he thinking of the film's withering attack on those two great objects of sentimental indulgence, the monarchy and the Catholic chuch? I don't know, because he does not say. His "review" is not a review - not an argument in support of a negative judgement - but merely a series of insults.
Why do I, and many others, hold Davies' film in high regard? Let me offer three reasons. First, its fusion of music and image is quite remarkable. Someone the music is used as an ironic counterpoint to the images (as in "The Folks Who Live on the Hill" ). Sometimes it is used to draw our attention to, and to celebrate, aspects of life we usually ignore (such as the sequence set to the piece by Branesti). Sometimes it is used to draw our attention to the alien quality of life in the past (such as the shots of crowds set to the piece by Taverner). Second, the film is hardly a simple celebration of the past. Rather it expresses a certain conflicted view of the past: we are in no doubt that the slums should have been cleared; but we are also shown that what they were replaced with was hardly any better. Third, the film has a very interesting structure. Whereas almost every film and TV programme made nowadays has a linear narrative, Davies's film has a cyclical structure, which connects its images not according to the principle what-happened-next but according to the principle of emotional association; for example, the opening scenes of Liverpool's buildings trigger a memory of the church, which trigger a memory of the fear of death, which trigger a memory of waking up after sleep, and so on, until at the close of the film we end up back where we started, except now we "know the place for the first time". Clearly Eliot's "Four Quartets" is an influence on the structure of the film, but I also think there are musical influences, e.g. the film sometimes looks as if it is going to resolve one of its main themes, only to delay the resolution for several minutes. That is something you get in, e.g., the music of Mahler.
Anyway, sorry to go on. I should also say that I didn't think the voiceover was pompous, merely frutily camp and, yes, somewhat overwrought. I also found the film very funny and very emotionally stirring. And I should say that I am not related to Terence Davies, nor a nostalgic for the past with an irrational hatred of the monarchy (my hatred of the monarchy is completely rational).
I concur with much of what Anscombe states.
I guess one had to expect, after the adulation the film received, to discover someone who decided that Davies needs knocking down a few pegs. (And who comes to the rescue? The last bastion of quality journalism - The Telegraph!). Or to paraphrase Voltaire, ‘If crap didn’t exist…’
And crap is all this nasty little collection of insults really is.
The agenda is clear: disparage everything Davies has done. So not only is this film, 'a sham, a risible and almost militantly superficial piece of regional PR'; but all of Davies's oeuvre is similarly facile and pretentious. An early, ahem, gem is the likening of ‘Distant Voices’ to Bread because it bears some thematic similarities. This delightfully deranged comparison is on a par with likening Ran to an episode of Monkey, or Taxi Driver to On the Buses.
If the reviewer wasn't so utterly monomaniacal forwarding his agenda, who knows he may have revealed something critically interesting about the film. Alas, he is too driven by his need to disparage Davies that he fails to make a single worthwhile point and his article is a shocking exercise in cheap and tawdry journalism.
He attacks Davies film in utterly subjective terms: 'his narration was maudlin drool of cliché and sentiment'. Yes, unashamedly personal films about one's childhood and community do tend to have a degree of sentiment about them.
He then holds up Bill Douglas and Dennis Potter (both artists whom I greatly admire by the way) as paragons of proletarian cinematic poetry.
I have to say, has he ever seen any of their work?
Morris's entire oeuvre was based on his childhood and early adult-life. And yet, could be equally caricatured (unfairly) as: 'The Monty Python's Yorkshire Miners sketch, writ large in clichéd Scotland: grim life, grim world, GRIM!'
And Potter had great difficulty getting away from his rose-coloured spectacles and the Forest of Dean.
It didn’t lessen or compromise their work; in fact a case for the converse could easily be made.
Another criticism (!) was the fact it didn't have anything to say apart from 'time passes'. Great. The reviewer blames his own rather limited intellect and readings on Davies's film. The film suggested a great deal beyond this: dealing with Davies own mortality, the insularity of Britain in the 1950's, the cruelty of the Catholic Church, et cetera. Not ground-breaking I admit, but personal and moving nonetheless.
Who cares that it wasn't a fully thought through riposte to Kant's, 'Critique of Pure Reason’!
He did slip in one revealing comment however and that was berating the film's homogenous ethnicity. I suspect this was really the issue that pricked his (m)ire. And what a ludicrous point it is. I've got news for him:
Many working class estates were overwhelmingly white in the 50's.
That's hardly a weakness of the film.
The posting comment above seems to continue the insulting subjective tone of the reviewer criticising the pompous narration (‘pompous’, in that Davies has opinions!), which spoiled the archive footage. However, there was almost a compliment in there. If the footage was spoilt, it must have had some value to begin with, or what’s there to spoil! So to cover that base, he states the footage was second-rate i.e. crap. I’m no expert in this scatological field, but can you spoil crap? Isn’t that some kind of tautological impossibility?!
The confusion didn’t begin there though. The poster started digging a hole for himself immediately by leveling abuse at the film’s many encomiums stating, ‘one reviewer was able to see through the sentimental nonsense spouted about this film’.
This fatuous line, beggars the question, how can the effusions of many reviewers be a criticism of the film?!
In closing, I must state that one can easily become very possessive when one sees a work of art they are extremely passionate about. There can be a tendency to try and defend it at the cost of listening to any other opinions or points of view. Although, the former certainly applies to my own feelings about this film, the latter doesn’t. If the poster or the reviewer had a valid point to make I would have been interested to read and acknowledge it. However, they were too busy closing their eyes and swinging the bludgeon to engage in any kind of meaningful discussion. What can you expect however from people who think criticism starts with an ‘sh’?!
OK, I will make a few "valid points" if I must. Firstly, my disappointment in the film was no doubt exacerbated by the rapturous critical response and the high expectations they encourage. Clearly the film was not for everyone but equally I would not wish to detract from the enjoyment some people have had from it. Nonetheless if critics don't raise the weaknesses of a film so that people, like myself, to whom those weaknesses overwhelm the positives can enter with a more measured perspective, they are doing everyone a disservice. Here's my long review:
The film was billed as a bittersweet memoir of post-war Liverpool. It is actually second rate archive footage spoiled by a bitter narration. Davies, for the narrator is he, works through his childhood issues as he goes along: Catholicism, homosexuality and vicious misanthropy. That’s perfectly healthy I’m sure, but perfectly tedious for the rest of us.
Consequently the film is marked with confusion. First, Davies romanticises the urban poor, treating us to shots that linger on craggy-faced urchins braving austerity. Then he opts to snidely attack their religious faith and their monarchy (‘the Betty Windsor show’), over images of pious worship and crowds merrily waving union flags.
Despite the intention to eulogise a departed Liverpool, a conspicuous paucity of relevant footage from that time leaves the project floundering, touring anywhere with vague connections. We get the Coronation, scenes from Wembley stadium and the Korean war. Even the shots of urban squalor do little to define Liverpool as a separate entity to the scores of once proud industrial towns.
Keen film goers may have noticed that there is a tendency for attractive people to get cast. Similarly when attaching a voice-over to large sections of a film, hiring someone with a sonorous voice can be recommended. Instead we get Davies himself, for authenticity rather than ego, I trust.
It would be a disservice to fail to record just how irritating Davies’ voice is. It curls with contempt over the words, echoing with a pomposity that cannot be justified by the series of banal observations and overwrought quotations that frame the pictures.
BBC Four sometimes airs programmes with titles such as “The Thirties in Colour,” which involve old footage from the ’30s, in colour . This is broadly similar, albeit less focussed and punctuated by the witterings of a dislikeable bore. Somehow it has been categorised as a cinematic poem to a lost landscape. The last time I checked it was still a film, and not a particularly good one.
Sadly I still doubt we can have a "meaningful discussion" because this remains so subjective. Frankly I rolled up eyes as soon as Davies began intoning at the start of the film while fans were no doubt enrapt. From that point on, our opinions continued to part ways; each to their own. I can see why people would enjoy parts of this, but I blanch at the suggestion that this film is something special. The cobbling together of archive footage, some well-known pieces of music and the ramblings of a rather hateful old man do not art make.
Of course you are right about the subjective nature of film criticism. There will come a point at which I will say “Well I didn’t find it tedious!” and you will say “Well I did find it tedious!” and there is very little that either of us can do to persuade the other of the contrary. But that does not mean that we cannot do anything to persuade the other of the merits or otherwise of the film. So, here is what I would say in response to your review.
First, given your correct remarks about the subjective nature of this sort of thing, you are wrong to describe Davies’s narration as “perfectly tedious for the rest of us”. Perfectly tedious for you, perhaps, but you have no grounds to assume that the rest of the audience had the same reaction. What made it very far from tedious, for me, was the way he illustrates his various autobiographical remarks them with images and sounds that are sometimes beautiful (the shots of the altar) sometimes bizarre (the shots of the wrestling) and sometimes hilarious (the wrestling; the Round the Horne extract).
Second, even though the film is conflicted, in a very interesting way, it is not “confused” for the reasons you mention. Davies is perfectly entitled to attack religious faith and the monarchy, because he is not engaged in the exercise of celebrating *everything* about the urban poor – their way of life, their opinions, their environment, and so on. Of course he thinks there are aspects of their life worth celebrating, and aspects which have something approaching beauty. (He did grow up in a Liverpool slum, after all, so he knows something about it.) But he also thinks there are aspects worth condemning: such as their sentimental indulgence of the monarchy and the church, and the appalling conditions in which they lived.
Third, you make a good point when you say that the film is not really about Liverpool. I think that is true. Most of the shots could be of any urban city. I must admit this is something I liked about the film: it seems to have a very narrow focus (one man’s life, one city) but in fact its focus is very broad – the life of many, many people, in many, many cites.
Anyway, I could go on. But I’ve probably gone on for too long already.
I should say that I agree with most of what japs says, and really like the point about Sandhu’s “delightfully deranged comparison”. It’s a game worth playing: if Distant Voices Still Lives is an artsy version of Bread, and Taxi Driver an artsy version of On the Buses, perhaps Winter Light is an artsy version of The Vicar of Dibley, L’Avventura an artsy version of Duty Free, and Les Quatre Cents Coups an artsy version of Please Sir!...
In response to OP’s reply, I have to state initially that it was rather nice to see someone responding on these boards with a differing point of view that doesn’t start engaging in lunatic invectives that would put David Berkowitz to shame. I must say that I’ve encountered my fair share of maniacs on the IMDB – although, for what it’s worth, the majority seem to be American. Nevertheless, I didn’t agree with much of what the O.P. offered.
He, at least, had the wherewithal to understand that the majority of his criticisms were highly subjective – given the personal nature of the movie, one has to expect this.
And yet the problem lies when he considers his subjective point of view underscores ‘weaknesses’ of the film. This is on a par with me saying that a weakness of Citizen Kane was that I found it boring.
So comments such as:
‘how irritating Davies’ voice is
witterings of a dislikeable bore
banal observations and overwrought quotations
still a film, and not a particularly good one’, do not inform our understanding of the film’s strengths or weaknesses one iota.
Most paradigmatic of this approach was, ‘cobbling together of archive footage, some well-known pieces of music and the ramblings of a rather hateful old man do not art make,’. Age aside, one could easily categorise Listen to Britain as a similarly cobbled together decoupage of music and images?! (It is far more than that of course)
The O.P. does make a reasonable point about ‘vague connections’ and if the film set out to be a holistic look at a class, or culture, or city from a period of time, he may have had a point. However, Davies’s film is a personal essay and the elliptical nature of the film is indicative of the desultory nature of his memories and his interests. So The Beatles were barely mentioned and Liverpool F.C. completely omitted, not because they weren’t important to the time or the town, but because they had no meaning within the life of Davies. That’s hardly a failure of the film. It’s like criticising Salesman, because it didn’t mention the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
Yes the title of the film was ‘Of Time and the City’, but the time and the city was not really Liverpool, or the North, or England, or even the 1950’s, they were all Terrence Davies!
P.S. LOL at L’Avventura as Duty Free!
I'm with james_gb on this one. Watching this film reminded me of one my own youthful experiences-- sitting watching a documentary about WW2 one christmas while an embittered, slightly weird and somewhat sozzled old uncle droned on on the sofa in the background about his own experiences of the war.
It would have been mildly absorbing without Davies's bizarre voice-over, though no more than that. I guess his uber-campy and theatrical delivery is a matter of taste-- some may like it, some may not-- but I don't think there's much excuse for the parade of clapped-out GCSE poetry cliches on time passing (Ozymandias? The Four Quartets? please!)or the extraordinarly sour, sneery and superior tone throughout. Davies is as entitled as anyone to express his views about the Catholic Church, the Royal Family or the Beatles but why should I care about his opinions? What in the film made those opinions distinctive? And given the numerous documentaries about the slum-clearance-to-slum-tower-blocks fiasco, why is the inclusion of this worn-out sociopolitical cliche different or interesting? Ditto the shots of children playing unsupervised in the street-- another cliche of the contemporary dinner party circuit.
The music invests the whole with an altogether unjustified aura of significance, but it takes more than a soundtrack of Liszt, Mahler et al to create something original.
I am not trying to assign myself the role of official defender of this film from all criticism. But I think the comment from "graham-578" deserves a response.
First, "Four Quartets" is not *simply* about the passing of time. It’s also about the cyclical nature of remembered time ("my end is my beginning") and the way in which some things seem to transcend time ("a pattern of timeless moments"). Davies's film seemed to me to find a cinematic form for these aspects of Eliot's poem quite brilliantly, not only in its cyclical structure, but also in the way it focuses on some seemingly trivial aspect of life only to invest it with timeless significance. The Branesti sequence is the best example of this (but see also some of Davies's other films, especially “Distant Voices, Still Lives” and "The Long Day Closes").
Second, there are plenty of obscure poems in the film alongside the more famous stuff (some of them by Davies himself). The more famous poems are best seen as a kind of entry-point into the film: comforting us with the familiar, before challenging us with the esoteric.
Third, I think the question should be not "Why should I care about his opinions?" but "Why shouldn't I care about his opinions". I certainly care about yours. And what made them distinctive in any case was the way they were presented. The genuinely jolting cut from the shots of the Korean War to the shots of the Coronation during the Hollies sequence is but one example. The same goes for the slum clearance section: a familiar theme, yes, but by setting it to the Peggy Lee song, I don’t think it’s ever been more memorably or movingly presented.
Fourth, of course there are some moments of sourness in the voice-over; the section on the Beatles is one example of this. But it’s hardly all like that: there is nothing sour, or superior, or sneering, about the voiceover during the opening scenes at the church, or the Round the Horne section, or the New Brighton section, or…, or… (there are many other examples).
I liked it, it was as if the nazi propaganda film 'Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet' had been commandeered by the prisoners and pointed in the opposite direction to the propaganda set-pieces.
I bet he has a good laugh with Jonathan Meades and possibly Howard Jacobson when he's not being fat and complacent.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
You know after reading all the above who doesn't have a love/hate thing with where they were brought up???? I, for one, sure can't "go home" again. The thing with Mr.Davies was that he was so disappointed he had to make "art" of that concept. It can get to some of us and his work here makes you see the reasons.
shareActually, it's usually the Brits with their condescending attitudes (and incessant attacks of American 'rip-off's' of UK shows, the tables of which were nicely turned on the Law & Order UK boards); who seem to resort to invective first.
shareI have to absolutely agree with James gb, particularly regarding Davies' voice. I went in expecting to see a film painting a memory-picture about a city I don't know much about. A well-reviewed film, I might add. Instead I was presented with some interesting bits of archival footage, with a boring old man going on about god-knows-what, certainly not saying much about what was being displayed. From start to finish, even in the bits where I could understand what he was saying, I couldn't figure out why he was saying it. Ok, the Beatles are a point of pride in Liverpool for many. Not for Davies; fair enough. But really, why should I care about Davies taste in music? What in particular does Elizabeth II have to do with Liverpool, either?
So what it comes down to is that this is less a film about a city than it is a film about a person, a person I really couldn't care less about. If it had been titled, 'Of Time and Terence Davies', then I could have known to have avoided it.
> ...through the sentimental nonsense .....
> ...hopeless nostalgic with ....
[I have not had the oppurtunity to see this movie yet]
I am surprised you say this as a critisicim, as his movies rely on nostalgia and sentimentality;
they are watermarks across his other films.
Yeah right - a Tory newspaper not liking a film about Liverpool. SHOCK! HORROR! Ha ha. For those of you unfamiliar with the British right wing hatred of everything to do with Liverpool I believe a little context and objectivity is required. The Tories (the British right wing) and their supporters (including the Daily Telegraph) have had a long-standing hatred of the city that goes back even further than the time the city dared to stand up to their 'blessed' Margaret Thatcher who did everything in her power to cripple the place. Now with this in mind re-read james gb's review.
janes gb:
Your review of the review is as steeped in nasty right wing bitterness as those who want to just sweep Hillsborough under the carpet before the police and the Murdoch media who supported them with their lies are brought to book.