Although the name was vaguely familiar, I knew nothing about
Terence Davies and had never seen any of his work. How could this be? Well, now
I had to see The Long Day Closes. Luckily, I have a subscription to
FilmStruck, where the movie is available for streaming. DVD.Netflix.com also carries it. [8/11/24 Note: neither of those venues exists anymore. Filmstruck eventually morphed into The Criterion Channel, where this movie is still available with a subscription.]
I have to agree with the above raves. The Long Day Closes
is an exceptional movie: visually, emotionally, artistically. As Brody notes,
it is a reverie – the director’s impressionistic recollections of and
reflections on his youth, circa 1955 when he was 10. It’s the time just before
puberty, when Davies (his character is called “Bud”) was still a child but already
sensing that the innocence and comforts of childhood were coming to an end. And
for that reason there’s an air of wistful nostalgia and sober melancholy
suffusing all of the proceedings, even the happiest moments.
Davies lets us know subtly and not so subtly what’s in store
from the outset. As the picture opens, the credits run for several minutes while the soundtrack plays the lovely and familiar 18th century Boccherini
minuet, and we watch a seemingly static shot of fresh-cut red and white roses
in a plain vase set against a darkened wall. If one pays close attention,
however, you may notice that over the course of the credits petals have been
falling from the roses, so by the end the bouquet seems well past its prime
(hint, hint). Some film buffs might also recognize that this very same minuet
was featured in the Alec Guinness film The Ladykillers, from 1955 – when
The Long Day Closes is set. The first scene of the film proper provides
further evidence of Davies’ intentions. It’s dark and rainy (seems always to be
raining in Liverpool) on a ruined, trash-strewn street of old, vacant brick row
houses. We glimpse a torn, faded movie poster on a wall as the camera slowly pans down the street and then
into a ruined house, there lingering on an exposed stairway. All the while, Nat
King Cole is beautifully crooning Stardust:
You wander down the
lane and far away
Leaving me a song
that will not die
Love is now the stardust
of yesterday
The music of the
years gone by.
Just as Nat finishes, we meet young Bud in his school outfit,
sitting on those very same stairs - but the stairs are covered with a burgundy
runner inside a snug little house, and it’s all homey and warm as Bud asks his
Mom, in his child voice (which has yet to change), if he can go to the
pictures. I’m making this obvious but it’s done quite subtly. We’re primed for
a memory film and so it is.
Unlike Truffaut’s 1959 coming of age classic, The 400
Blows, which The Long Day Closes resembles in some respects, there’s
not going to be a story arc here. Just impressions and memories of the kinds of
things and incidents that one recalls when thinking about the childhood home
and family, the seemingly un-momentous moments that somehow stick with you.
Stuff that others around you may not recall at all. Your mother’s singing for
example. Mine hummed more than sang – stuff like They Say It’s Wonderful and Yes,
We Have No Bananas. For Bud’s (Davies’)
Mom it’s stuff like My Foolish Heart
and Me and My Shadow. She sings warmly
and well (as he remembers it).
There’s the time when Bud is comforted by a nun after a
nosebleed at school; and the cozy house party with family and friends where
someone starts singing a popular song, and after the first line, the whole
group joins in – songs like I Don’t Know
Why (I just Do); and that quiet Christmas eve gathering of the family by
candlelight: Mom, Bud’s two older brothers with their steady girls, and his aunt
Helen, posed as if for a portrait, all of whom fondly, quietly wish Bud a Happy
Christmas when he appears in the doorway. These are just fragments, but in the
aggregate they form a picture of Bud’s remembered world, of a special time and
place long gone.
The photography throughout is composed and gorgeous. The muted color scheme and the incorporated
details feed the fantasy of reminiscence, and render what otherwise might be
dull lovely and fascinating. This being Liverpool, there are lots of
rain-related images. One that I liked was of Bud lying atop his bed on a wet
afternoon idly gazing at the shadow cast on his near wall by a window frame and
its wooden grill, with reflected images of raindrops on the panes slowly dripping
and sliding down the wall. He reaches out his hand with indolent curiosity to
touch these shadows. This is followed by an unhurried shot of his bedroom rug,
as the light and shadows of the changing day play across it. As I watched, I
wondered how Davies and his director of photography, Michael Coulter, got away
with this stuff. They did though. I
never looked away (or at my watch). Coulter, by the way, also did the
cinematography on loads of other pictures, including Four Weddings and A
Funeral (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Mansfield Park
(1999).
The fabulous visuals are melded with music throughout the film – popular songs of the day (many from then current movies), liturgical music, and even local English folk tunes. The music is as important to the feel and meaningfulness of the movie as the photography and the acting. I’ve already noted some examples. Here’s one more: Debbie Reynolds singing her period-evocative love songTammy, as we are treated to a series of overhead shots - looking down first at rows of moviegoers in a darkened theater, seguing into rows of churchgoers in their pews, seguing into rows of schoolboys at their desks, and then a final overhead of Bud’s street, as he watches his best friend walking to the cinema with another kid.
Even without an actual story, this movie is one of the most
intimate I’ve ever seen. There’s a great depth of feeling here. Michael Koresky
wrote: “With it’s purposeful lack of breadth, The Long Day Closes is all
depth.” Absolutely right. It’s like you’re inside Davies’ mind, seeing what he
sees as he recalls scenes from what he has called the last happy time of his
life. Not that it’s all or even mostly happy times, but there are some of
those, along with more fraught moments. One senses that Davies is not the most lighthearted
or contented fellow.
Throughout the film several themes recur time and again: the
warmth and protection of family (and especially Mom), the mystery and support
of church (and the kindness of nuns), school (the strange authority adults
represent and the social pressures of the schoolyard), cinema (an escape from
the everyday and a source of constant enjoyment), the satisfactions of solitude
and the concomitant pain and loneliness of being an outsider.
Bud is a watcher. Several scenes in The Long Day Closes
have him standing at an upstairs window, gazing out at the world – the street
below, the sky above - just watching. (No doubt this is good practice for a
future film writer/director.) It’s clear that Davies has always felt like an
outsider, and Bud reflects this.
It may aid one’s appreciation of his film to understand that
he is a gay man; one who has never become wholly comfortable with his
homosexuality. Having grown up Catholic in a working class community in the
1950s, he acknowledges that throughout his life he has struggled with an
ingrained residue of shame, a victim of the attitudes prevalent in that world.
Early in the picture, Bud is looking out the window and
spies a young, bare-chested construction worker at a building project across
the way. After awhile, the man notices the boy looking at him and winks at him.
Embarassed, Bud pulls away from his lookout and sits with back to the wall,
uncomfortable and perhaps a bit thrilled as well. At ten, Bud probably has not
fully realized that his sexual orientation differs from the expected “norm”,
but he already knows he’s different.
I was unaware of Davies’ orientation when I first watched
this film. I recognized Bud’s discomfort in this and some other scenes later
on, and my lack of context did not mute my enjoyment. Still, on my second
viewing these experiences stood out more clearly, and my appreciation was
enriched.
A brief comment about the acting. It is spot on. Davies made
a great choice in casting a kid named Leigh McCormack as Bud. As far as I know, this was his only picture, but he makes the most of it. His face is perfect for the part – sometimes he seems very young and child like, but at other times one can see the young man he will become in his features. In this regard, he reminded me of young Jean-Pierre Léaud, the star of The 400 Blows. Also
worthy of special mention is Marjory Yates, who brings a poignancy and warmth
to the role of Bud’s mother. I’m thinking of a brief scene where she quietly
sings a sorrowful love song to Bud, who’s snuggled in her arms one evening;
then, when the song ends she just sits there, and as the camera lingers, a few
tears roll down her cheeks as she recalls her deceased husband. Pretty much
everyone in the cast does well – from Bud’s authoritarian teachers to family
friend Edna (Tina Malone) and her sweet, alcoholic long-suffering husband Curly
(Jimmy Wilde).
A Long Day Closes is a beautiful picture and a must
see for all movie lovers – provided you’re not too wedded to the need for plot.
Cinephiles will also be rewarded by
numerous snippets referencing other movies, from Orson Welles laying on the
nostalgia in his narration for The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) to
Martita Hunt as old Miss Havisham going on about her ancient untouched wedding
cake in Great Expectations (1947).
Regrettably, it’s not always easy to get hold of some of
Davies other pictures. These include “The Terence Davies’ Trilogy”(1983),
The House of Mirth (2000), and The Deep Blue Sea (2011). The good
news is that Davies has a new film, A Quiet Passion, about the poet
Emily Dickenson, starring Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Ehle, which conveniently
is just now being rolled out in the US (to strong reviews). It’ll probably be
in relatively limited release, however
85 minutes
Grade: A
The Long Day Closes is available to stream free with a subscription to The Criterion Channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment