WRITTEN, DIRECTED & NARRATED BY TERENCE DAVIES

“This lovely, astringent film. A surpassingly lyrical filmmaker. A stubbornly and thrillingly literary work… a deeply personal piece of art… a work of social and literary criticism that never lectures or hectors, but rather, with melancholy, tenderness and wit, manages to sing.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“Beautiful… At once a symphony of the city and a memento mori.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“Hilariously sarcastic narration. A mesmerizing tapestry. Haunting images. Draws powerfully on a brilliantly chosen soundtrack. A movie full of brilliant (notes).”
– Lou Lumenick, New York Post

“A cinematic madeleine.” – Michael Koresky, indieWIRE

“By turns moving, droll and charming, and niftily assembled…A collage of archive material and original footage is fused with distinctive musical choices and a rhapsodic voiceover by Davies himself. The cumulative effect is entrancing as it unspools.”
– Leslie Felperin, Variety

“(Terence Davies) has successfully constructed an outstanding work about the hometown he may have left behind but has clearly not ceased to haunt him.”
– Howard Feinstein, Screen International

“Poetically composed, with marvelous lumps of wit and perspective,
OF TIME AND THE CITY is a masterwork.”
– Duane Byrge, The Hollywood Reporter

“A magnificently beautiful movie!”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)

Terence Davies is a poet whose movies, in his own words, deal with “the nature of time, the nature of mortality, the transience of life.” OF TIME AND THE CITY, not unlike his previous films (DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES; THE LONG DAY CLOSES; THE HOUSE OF MIRTH) has the mood of an extended prayer, albeit by one who abhors the church. Davies brings postwar Liverpool to life through archival footage, dotted with literary and musical references: Peggy Lee singing The Folks Who Live on the Hill, the Hollies and Johnny Mercer; quotations from T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Carl Jung. Davies paints a picture of a simpler life: row houses, women hauling laundry, little boys in short pants, grandmas in shawls, and “the annual exotic pomegranate” at Christmas. With biting humor and candor he embraces the tensions of growing up poor and gay in a society where the movies and popular music battled for allegiance with the triumvirate of home, church and school. An official selection at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The Guardian (UK) calls the film “ecstatic…sublime…miraculous…a welcome comeback for one of Britain’s greatest film-makers.”

Official Film Website

Click here to read A.O. Scott's review in The New York Times

UK • 2008 • 74 MINS. • STRAND RELEASING