The House of Mirth

• The Liverpool-born director extended the formal possibilities of film, and had a unique capacity for depicting memory and personal history.
• Here are four films that show the director dealing directly with this history, while also charting the development of his distinctive, very personal style.

1. Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

• The director’s breakthrough came in 1988 with the release of Distant Voices, Still Lives, which tells the story of one working class family’s life in post-war Liverpool.
• The film was originally two short pieces made two years apart, which were later combined.
• Distant Voices, Still Lives is not only an excellent example of the formal styling that would come to characterise Davies’ work, but also the key role that music plays throughout his films.

2. The Long Day Closes (1992)

• The film also reflects on Bud’s developing sense of his own homosexuality and the shame that accompanies this realisation.
• The Long Day Closes is a companion piece to Distant Voices, Still Lives in its focus on family life in Liverpool.

3. The Neon Bible (1995)

• In this way, The Neon Bible can be understood as an act of deflected autobiography.
• Davies dismissed The Neon Bible after its release as a creative failure.

4. Of Time and the City (2009)

• Arguably Davies crowning work, Of Time and the City marked a late career resurgence for the director.
• Thanks to the film’s critical success, he continued to produce work steadily in the final decade of his life.
• The film looks back on the Liverpool in which he grew up, and is made from a tapestry of different sounds and images.