MovieChat Forums > Of Time and the City (2008) Discussion > Question about one of the early scenes

Question about one of the early scenes


I loved this film - it moved me to tears and I did not even grow up there or anything - just visited the city twice... Terence Davies is in my opinion, the most underrated director in the world and a true genius!
In one of the opening scenes you see a lot of people bathing in what seems a beach or maybe an outdoor pool - what is it, exactly?!

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It is in fact a lido. Not actually in liverpool, but across the river mersey, on the wirral. As a child in the late fifties / early sixties, my parents used to take me "over the water" on the ferry to New Brighton as a treat. I am not certain if it is the New Brighton lido that features in the film as there was at least one, possibly two other lidos on the "other side of the river" . All now sadly gone and greatly missed.

Have lived and worked in Liverpool all my life. I too loved the film and am pleased you did too. I hope it reaches a wide audience. Hope this is of some help.



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I'm pretty sure it is New Brighton Lido too. I have a photo of my aunt there, taken before the war. We also used to go to New Brighton for a treat when I was a child in the 1960s

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The scene of the lido was fascinating. The place was heaving! Although it only lasted a few seconds, I couldn't help but notice that everyone was skinny. I scanned frantically to find someone my size, but couldn't! Rationing certainly had an impact.

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I heartily disagree that Terence Davies is some sort of underrated great director. I think the city of Liverpool too highly over-rated him, much to their present well-earned misgivings.
Of Time and The City is a singularly horrible piece of spite -- masquerading as a sort of elegy for Liverpool. His sneering narration was full of nasty slurrs against Catholicism (including *beep* the Pope"), mockeries of the Queen in her corronation year, and puerile diatribes about being gay but unwanted in love, that we would have walked out were we not well ensconced in a row of viewers in coats and boots (a blizzard wailing outside). Davies' entire composition, including its unoriginality and veritable plagiarism seemed designed to offend; yet what apalled me was that for this festival of 27 films from 27 European countries represented at our EU film festival, this was the U.K. pick by a British High Comissioner.
The festival writeup claimed Davies as Britain's greatest living film director (!), and that he was invited to compose this bleak retrospective on Liverpool's underbelly "to mark [its] status as European Capital of Culture". Although I'd not seen his Distant Voices Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, or The House of Mirth, it seems that the first two - and a trilogy of lesser known early films (Children, Madonna and Child, and Death and Transfiguration) - are a continuuum of reflections on himself, with whom he seems fascinated beyond all proportion. Even in making Of Time and the City, he considers it at least as much about himself:: "a way of dealing with all those things which are important to me", as it may be about the place of his youth. One has to wonder what the Liverpool Council must be thinking now if this is supposedly a friend of the city -- with such as these, they need no enemies.
According to Wikipedia there are two other film projects to Davies' credit - the Neon Bible and Sunset Song. These and House of Mirth are adaptations of novels by John K. Toole, Lewis G. Gibbon and Edith Wharton, and in fact Sunset Song's funding at BBC fell through. Although House of Mirth won a 2002 Adapted screenplay award (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200720/awards ) it was not original, having been recast from the Albert Capillani version of 1981 and Adrian Hall's TV version of the same year. Neon Bible won no awards (albeit with two Cannes nominations) and Davies himself said "The Neon Bible' doesn't work ... The only thing I can say is that it's a transition work. And I couldn't have done 'The House of Mirth' without it."
Neon Bible, the while borrowing from John Toole's novel is again produced in autobiographical mood, at least according to the one reviewer I could find who is effulgent with praise (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113952/ ). It would seem that the one single film which could have attracted Liverpudlian aldermen to invite Davies as an accomplished film-maker was House of Mirth, made vaguely memorable by Gillian Anderson and Dan Aykroyd - notwithstanding Davies' own rejection of Hollywoodism (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0203993/bio). So much for Britain's greatest living filmmaker.
What I will say about Of Time and the City is that (a) it should be judged or compared not with modern moving pictures, but with montages, overdubbed silent film and newsreel propaganda, (b) the pacing of much of the newsreel material is cleverly timed to eclectic score selections, such as a waltz over footage of be-boppers at the Beatle's opening at The Cave in Berlin -- but hardly rates even a favourable comparison to Wim Wenders, (c) reviewers are right to note Davies' preoccupation with remembering, but they fail to notice the revisionist slant that comes of a disgruntled man seeing himself as an alter James Joyce looking back with much-rehearsed angst through his mortal coil -- in short, he is not so 'honest' a rememberer as they make him out to be. After all, Davies himself admits that whereas he had boundless piety as a child, he is now a zealous born-again atheist -- and that informs his commentary. Such a soul cannot remember what true piety is, even if a boy tortured about his identity had any.
As for any original qualities, this moving montage has none; neither has it real humour aside from the spiteful sort; and as a raving desideratum it reeks of propaganda. The fact that even a High Commissioner doesn't see that he too is the butt of the malice means that it is highly effective propaganda, of a demoralizing sort that even Nazis would have been proud to broadcast to the British Isles. In fact, Davies irked me most by conveying under the guise of pacifism a message that in Hitler's day would have amounted to appeasement -- all to the Hollies' tune of He Ain't Heavy. He nearly ruined one of my favourite songs of all time!

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What vitriol, and from someone who admits that he has not seen Davies other films. I have seen everything that Davies has made and am one of those folks who has been reading about "Of Time and the City" and mourning about not being able to see it yet. Davies' atheism and sardonic sense of humor clearly offended this "viewer"; the anger makes it difficult to take anything in his review seriously (and if I am incorrect in assuming that "dgknight-1" is male, I apologize for offending).

Please, people who are serious about film, watch Davies' earlier works and judge for yourselves. "Distant Voices, Still Lives" IS a masterpiece, as is "The Long Day Closes." And Terence Davies' "Trilogy" reveals the filmmaker's early artistic promise and the agonized route that he made to find and claim himself, despite his very faithful commitment a religion that told him he was a sinful abomination. The trilogy films are angst filled, gorgeous, fascinating, and difficult to watch, but they are also spectacular. And they enable one to see just where and how Davies transferred/translated his spiritual belief and investment in the power of images and icons. His films' explorations of memory, longing, desire, and loss are akin to spiritual exercises. For a neat glimpse of his playful self, find the Davies piece on the old South Bank Show; his tribute to Doris Day is a sheer delight--and one can see how deeply Davies loves Liverpool--his Liverpool, which is acknowledged as a lost/forever changed place, that is still very dear to his heart.

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Oh, I don't know. Having just watched the film and come here looking for clues as to why it was enjoyable to so many critics, I'm not coming out the wiser. It seems to me that to truly appreciate this film, one needs quite a few prerequisites: To be more than passably familiar with Liverpool, to know something (or a lot) about Terence Davies, to care about either or both. And these are fine, but my goodness this film should travel with a warning.

I'm an atheist myself, but sorry, all that religious angst and architecture was just dead boring to me. As to Davies' opinions on the monarchy and popular music: sorry, I really couldn't care less. You see, I'm viewing the film in Toronto, and while we may have a tenuous connection to the Queen here, not much else resonates. And that's fine. I enjoy films from all over the world, but Davies is apparently so self-indulgent that he felt whatever was interesting to himself about his own feelings should be preserved on film.

Also, from a purely technical point of view, I couldn't understand what people were saying half the time. This is partly down to his voice (though for heaven sakes, I could understand the various members of the Beatles perfectly well when they have spoken over the years, so the LIverpudlian accent can't be that difficult) and partly down to the mixing of the soundtrack which sounded muffled much of the time. Anyway, I missed the part where he said he was gay. Not that I care, particularly.

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The scene in question features the open air pool (LIDO) at New Brighton, across the river Mersey from Liverpool

Hurricane Films Ltd
19 Hope Street
Liverpool
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I watched this on DVD the other day. Picked it up as part of the box set which includes all of Davies previous Liverpool-based films.

I grew up in Liverpool in the sixties, so I am slightly too young to remember a lot of the earlier scenes depicted in the documentary. But the 70's, 70's and 80's era I can certainly identify with.

I also have very faint memories of being taken 'across the water' on the ferry to New Brighton and the fair when I was very young, so thosse scenes were very moving for me...footage of New Brighton from that era is very hard to find.

I also recognised footage from Kirkby as well (I lived there in the 70's) - the Roughwood shops, and what looked like the 3 storey flats that were just behind the Woodpecker pub. I have a feeling this may have been taken from Ray Gosling's documentary of the town that was made in the early 70's...?

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