Long Day Closes (DVD)

For the first time ever on DVD comes BFI Fellowship Awarded Terence Davies' masterpiece, The Long Day Closes, which acts as Davies' follow up to Distant Voices, Still Lives, his autobiographical memoirs of growing up in Liverpool in the 1950's. In post-war Liverpool the rain-drenched streets, lice-ridden impoverishment and high unemployment makes for a wreckage of a town, and growing up here was no easy feat. But for eleven-year-old Bud, despite the hardships, he found a warmth and bliss rarely seen. The love of his mother, his sexual awakening and the rich culture springing up around him as pop music and cinema take off add to his childhood bliss. Davies sticks to his fragmented, patchwork narrative to show the nature of his own personal memory, interspersed with snatched songs and surreal daydreams and so the audience can emphasise with his every grin and grimace. With Liverpool's City Of Culture recognition The Long Day Closes becomes ever more important as its appreciation of the pop music and cinema which came out of Liverpool is accredited with Bud's happiness, and therefore Terence Davies' and his admission into cinema himself.