Why I love Ter­ence Davies’ The Long Day Closes

Ten years ago, Ter­ence Davies’ career appeared to have irre­versibly stalled. His most recent film, crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Edith Whar­ton adap­ta­tion, The House of Mirth, was fast becom­ing a dis­tant bea­con of his mas­tery, and Davies appeared an increas­ing anachro­nism amid the hea­thenism of the British film industry.

In a land­scape of James Bond, Har­ry Pot­ter and sub-Guy Ritchie gang­ster flicks, there was almost an ele­ment of pathos about Davies’ mod­est and elu­sive cru­sade to fund niche lit­er­ary projects. Plans to make a Ter­rence Rat­ti­gan film to mark the dramatist’s cen­te­nary, an adap­ta­tion of a lit­tle known Scot­tish nov­el by Lewis Gras­sic Gib­bon, and a biopic about a 19^th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can female poet, seemed des­tined to remain for­ev­er in devel­op­men­tal quagmire.

Then, seem­ing­ly out of nowhere, Davies had unex­pect­ed suc­cess with a side project: Of Time and the City, an inti­mate docu-por­trait of his home­town of Liv­er­pool. This seemed to reopen doors for Davies, and in he stepped from the cold; no longer per­sona non gra­ta. Fast for­ward nine years, and all those unlike­ly pres­tige projects have been realised to high­ly respectable crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess. And with the excel­lence of Davies’ Emi­ly Dick­in­son biopic, A Qui­et Pas­sion, still fresh in the mem­o­ry, it only seems right to revis­it and reclaim the excel­lence of Davies’ ear­li­er mas­ter­work, The Long Day Clos­es. It may be one of Davies’ less­er known films, but it is arguably his most per­fect – 85 min­utes of qui­et, con­tem­pla­tive cin­e­ma par excellence.

Davies’ genius, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of British cin­e­ma, is that he is so rad­i­cal­ly and uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly expres­sion­is­tic. Even the more acclaimed con­tem­po­rary British auteurs – Ken Loach and Mike Leigh chief among them – make the medi­um of cin­e­ma sub­servient to their desire to com­mu­ni­cate lin­ear sto­ries and par­lay social truths. Davies, how­ev­er, is so rad­i­cal­ly inte­ri­or – a true pro­po­nent of the puri­ty of cin­e­mat­ic sto­ry­telling – and is much more inter­est­ed in the medi­um as a device to doc­u­ment the prop­er­ty of mem­o­ries and record the pass­ing of time. With The Long Day Clos­es, there isn’t even real­ly a nar­ra­tive as such; it’s more a hymn to the echoes and sen­sa­tions of child­hood – a par­adise gained and lost.

Tes­ta­ment to the majesty of The Long Day Clos­es is its exquis­ite open­ing track­ing shot – unques­tion­ably one of the finest sequences ever con­struct­ed by a British film­mak­er. The cam­era fix­ates on a dingy, dilap­i­dat­ed old street of aban­doned ten­e­ments. Rain cours­es melan­choli­cal­ly down (is this the most sen­so­ry use of rain­fall in cin­e­ma since Tarkovsky’s Nos­tal­gia?), before the chords of Nat King Cole’s heart­break­ing ​‘Star­dust’ kick in.

Sud­den­ly, as if the per­spec­tive has become per­son­i­fied, the cam­era tracks down the street, old aur­al rem­i­nis­cences of British film clas­sics like The Ladykillers and The Hap­pi­est Days of Your Life com­pete with the bari­tone swoon of King Cole before the gaze halts at the door­way of one of the aban­doned hous­es. Mag­i­cal­ly, a door opens, and dark­ness and ruin trans­forms into light and life. So begins The Long Day Closes.

Mem­o­ry doesn’t nar­rate; it drifts, it con­tem­plates. Like­wise, the film floats around the ephemera of its sto­ry, qui­et­ly immers­ing itself in the moments that con­ven­tion­al dra­matur­gy would over­look. Ear­ly on there is a scene in which the young pro­tag­o­nist, Bud (Leigh McCor­ma­ck), is lying on his bed lis­ten­ing to his moth­er singing down­stairs. Noth­ing hap­pens as such, but it is such a qui­et, con­cen­trat­ed scene – Davies slow­ing the pace of his die­ge­sis right down to sanc­ti­fy the sen­sa­tions of mem­o­ry. For if mem­o­ry is a sen­so­ry arte­fact, then sights, sounds and tex­tures endure long past the fleet­ing slings and arrows of our busy, world­ly lives.

This is per­haps why Davies bom­bards so many of his nar­ra­tives with scenes of char­ac­ters singing. It is not an affec­ta­tion, but a propul­sive way to hon­our the aes­thet­ics of mem­o­ry. Par­tic­u­lar­ly when Davies’ auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal films are set in a time before tele­vi­sion (and lat­er the inter­net) trans­formed the cul­ture of domes­tic life, singing pop­u­lar songs was often the only social and emo­tion­al out­let for his char­ac­ters, and Davies seems to be sub­tly lament­ing the loss of this com­mu­nal pas­time with their recur­rent inclusion.

The film’s grace­ful state of quiet­ness, inte­ri­or­i­ty and con­tem­pla­tion is a recur­ring hall­mark of Davies’ work. Lily Bart’s down­fall in The House of Mirth is one of the most dream­like depic­tions of a trag­ic descent ever cap­tured on film, a world away from the histri­on­ic demon­stra­tions of Mar­tin Scorsese’s own Edith Whar­ton adap­ta­tion, The Age of Inno­cence. And Emi­ly Dickinson’s slow demise in the sec­ond half of A Qui­et Pas­sion is anoth­er of Davies’ sig­na­ture evo­ca­tions of death – a fit­ting epi­taph for a man whose films all seem to make sacred the state of nos­tal­gia, and grieve the loss of Eden.