What do you remember of your childhood? Other than major events, the majority of your memories are probably vaguely defined and few films have more deftly captured that hazy recollection of youth than Terence Davies’ riveting “The Long Day Closes.” More of an art piece than a traditional narrative, the film, recently added to The Criterion Collection, may first seem slow but becomes transfixing in the deliberate way that its creator doesn’t seek to replicate history but his memory of it.
Rating: 4.5/5.0
With dozens of songs, many of them in their entirety (we hear three before a line of dialogue), and some still shots that have the beauty of an artist’s eye, “The Long Day Closes” is a beautifully conceived and executed. A mother singing quietly to herself as she makes tea, the reflection of rain on a boy’s ceiling, the escape of the cinema — “The Long Day Closes...
Rating: 4.5/5.0
With dozens of songs, many of them in their entirety (we hear three before a line of dialogue), and some still shots that have the beauty of an artist’s eye, “The Long Day Closes” is a beautifully conceived and executed. A mother singing quietly to herself as she makes tea, the reflection of rain on a boy’s ceiling, the escape of the cinema — “The Long Day Closes...
- 1/30/2014
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
The inimitable Terence Davies gets his first Criterion treatment this month with his 1992 title, The Long Day Closes, a superb memory poem drenched in melancholy nostalgia. A follow-up to the much more dark and brutal Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), Davies returns once more to the memoirs of a ravaged childhood, further expanded upon from his first three short films which comprised The Terence Davies Trilogy (1976-1984). Swimming freely between quiet fantasy sequences and recollections of free associations as we drift in and out of abandoned ramshackle buildings of the past like a restless spirit, there is a delicate and fragile longing in Davies’ second feature, a ruminative exploration absent from the pained dirge of his previous film.
Bud (Leigh McCormack) is a bright and lonely 11 year old boy growing up in 1950’s Liverpool. Absent a father figure, Bud spends most of his time at home with his mother (Marjorie Yates...
Bud (Leigh McCormack) is a bright and lonely 11 year old boy growing up in 1950’s Liverpool. Absent a father figure, Bud spends most of his time at home with his mother (Marjorie Yates...
- 1/28/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Jan. 28, 2014
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Leigh McCormack stars in 1992's The Long Day Closes.
The 1992 family drama The Long Day Closes is generally regarded as one of the finest works by the British writer/director Terence Davies (The Deep Blue Sea), one of Britain’s most respected filmmakers.
This autobiographical film takes on the perspective of a quiet, movie-loving boy named Bud (Leigh McCormack, in his one and only film role) growing up lonely in Liverpool in the 1950s. Rather than employ a straightforward narrative, Davies jumps in and out of time, swoops into fantasies and fears, summons memories and dreams.
An evocative, movie-and-music–besotted portrait of the artist as a young man, The Long Day Closes fuses clips and audio from classic movies into Bud’s childhood and brings it all to elegant life.
Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD Combo release of the PG-...
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Leigh McCormack stars in 1992's The Long Day Closes.
The 1992 family drama The Long Day Closes is generally regarded as one of the finest works by the British writer/director Terence Davies (The Deep Blue Sea), one of Britain’s most respected filmmakers.
This autobiographical film takes on the perspective of a quiet, movie-loving boy named Bud (Leigh McCormack, in his one and only film role) growing up lonely in Liverpool in the 1950s. Rather than employ a straightforward narrative, Davies jumps in and out of time, swoops into fantasies and fears, summons memories and dreams.
An evocative, movie-and-music–besotted portrait of the artist as a young man, The Long Day Closes fuses clips and audio from classic movies into Bud’s childhood and brings it all to elegant life.
Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD Combo release of the PG-...
- 11/7/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Photo by Liam Daniel.
"I don't want you
But I hate to lose you
You've got me inbetween
The devil and the deep blue sea." —Harold Arlen & Ted Koehler
The idiom "between the devil and the deep blue sea" refers to a dilemma where one must choose between two undesirable situations. In Terence Davies' filmic adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1952 play of the same name—The Deep Blue Sea (2011) was commissioned by the Sir Terence Rattigan Charitable Trust to commemorate the centenary of the playwright—it might be thought that Davies is playing with the idiom's unconfirmed nautical origins. As a portrait of class structure in post-wwii England, Davies could be said to be borrowing from the reference that "between the devil and the deep blue sea" signifies how English Navy sailors were pressed unwillingly into service and then positioned beneath the upper deck (officer territory). Or, perhaps more accurate to its romantic subtext,...
"I don't want you
But I hate to lose you
You've got me inbetween
The devil and the deep blue sea." —Harold Arlen & Ted Koehler
The idiom "between the devil and the deep blue sea" refers to a dilemma where one must choose between two undesirable situations. In Terence Davies' filmic adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1952 play of the same name—The Deep Blue Sea (2011) was commissioned by the Sir Terence Rattigan Charitable Trust to commemorate the centenary of the playwright—it might be thought that Davies is playing with the idiom's unconfirmed nautical origins. As a portrait of class structure in post-wwii England, Davies could be said to be borrowing from the reference that "between the devil and the deep blue sea" signifies how English Navy sailors were pressed unwillingly into service and then positioned beneath the upper deck (officer territory). Or, perhaps more accurate to its romantic subtext,...
- 3/21/2012
- MUBI
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