The Long Day Closes, released four years later in 1992, isn't a sequel in any literal sense of the term - none of the actors return and the names of the characters are all changed - but it nonetheless carries on the story of Davies family after the death of his father with the focus on a character absent from the earlier film. 12-year-old Bud (Leigh McCormack) is the youngest in a loving family looked over by an affectionate widowed mother (Marjorie Yates). A sweet, quiet schoolboy in love with the movies, he's Davies' stand-in in a film that offers a fictionalized reflection on what Davies described as the happiest days of his life.
Just like Bud, The Long Day Closes is in love with the movies. After a still life of an opening credits sequence that plays like an elegant tribute to the title sequences of films from the 1940s and 1950s, the familiar 20th Century Fox fanfare takes us into a rainy Liverpool alley plastered in posters. The fanfare segues into Nat King Cole singing "Stardust" as the camera glides down the alley at a graceful stroll. The imagery is simple and dense, on the one hand a dreary, drizzly English evening in a trash-strewn alley, on the other a dreamy moment of remembrance lit up by the promises of the posters, the smooth, soft resonance of Cole's voice cradled in the lush arrangement of the song, and the glow of studio lights that romanticizes even the drab, dirty brick walls and grimy street scene and gives the rain a glint of movie magic. It sets the culture and the tone of the film, a portrait of a working class neighborhood of post-war Liverpool stirred with the popular culture of the era and warmed by the director's happy memories.
It also sets Davies style. There's no traditional story to speak of here, no dramatic conflict to send the characters off on a goal or motivating action to set a series of events in motion. Rather, Davies offers cinematic snapshots capturing privileged moments of Bud's life with pop songs and clips of movie soundtracks connecting the slivers of scenes. Davies' camera seems to float through the scenes and drift from one moment to another, as if one memory fading into another, and the effect is of time and space dissolving together. Bud takes in everything: watching his brothers and sister, all young adults or on the verge of adulthood, with adoring eyes as they work and josh and sing popular standards together in the family home; gently prodding his ma for enough pocket change to buy a matinee ticket and watching her melt into an indulgent smile as she opens up her purse; enjoying the strange adult world of affectionate insults and joking remarks as neighbors gather for a holiday celebration in their tiny kitchen.
This remembrance of 1955 Liverpool has been recreated in a studio, where Davies' control has enabled an idealized recreation of his past, designed and art directed to a perfection possible only through the glow of memory. The quality of light throughout is astounding, from the change of seasons to the passing of the day, the temperature shifting through changing weather, and the beams catching dust in the air, whether through a window in a room or the beam of a film projector in a theater.
But such childhood cannot last forever. Bud graduates to a new Catholic school he finds himself in a more hostile social environment where he's immediately targeted by bullies (Bud is among the smallest boys of the class) and disciplinarian teachers are quick to use a ruler on the hand for any infraction. Seen through his eyes, religion is about punishment and control, and his troubled relationship is evocatively captures with his fascination with and fear of the carved effigy of the crucified Christ hanging above the altar of his church, at once a beautiful sculpture and a brutal portrait of suffering. In contrast to the warm glow and relaxed atmosphere of family scenes, school is cold and regimented, with the occasional daydream bringing a brief moment of grace to the experience. It's no coincidence that the beam of light that picks Bud out of the rows of school desks as his mind drifts to happier thought echoes the flickering beam over Bud's head at his matinee screenings. The light of art and culture and family gatherings is Bud's idea of the Holy Spirit.
Davies had a troubled childhood as he struggled with the realization that he was gay in a time when homosexuality was not only considered deviant, it was quite literally illegal in Britain. There is a hint of Bud's difference from others in the final scenes of The Long Day Closes but the overriding tone is one of celebration. The exacting textures and delicate moods, sustained in heavenly beams of light and the reflection of warm memories, gives the film a glow I've never seen in another film. For 85 minutes, Davies suspends us in the cradle of family and community and comforting memory. The specifics belong to Davies and his childhood in mid-fifties Liverpool but the evocation of comfort and affection and innocence in the thrall of movies and music and loving family is not beholden to any particular time or culture.
Never before on disc in the U.S., Criterion releases the film on a Blu-ray+DVD Dual Format edition, mastered from a restored 2K film transfer supervised by Davies and director of photography Michael Coulter. Much of the film's experience comes through the quality of light and the texture of his recreations and this transfer brings them all to life. The colors are muted, like they've been aged, but warm and the image clean and clear and sharp even when his palette suggests the hazy glow of memory.
Both discs feature a commentary track by Davies and Coulter recorded in 2007 and a 1992 episode of the British arts TV program The South Bank Show that profiles Davies and The Long Day Closes as he was being hailed one of Britain's great new directors. Both programs give Davies opportunity to reflect back on his childhood and his love of movies. Also features new video interviews with executive producer Colin MacCabe and production designer Christopher Hobbs. The accompanying booklet features an essay by Criterion's house writer Michael Koresky, who is currently finishing a book on Terence Davies. His essay is less about the film in particular than on Davies' distinctive approach to cinema and his use of autobiography.
By Sean Axmaker
