Distant voices… Of Time and the City (2008)

Terence Davies’ memorial montage of Liverpool was commissioned as part of the city’s 2008 Capital of Culture celebration. The organisers were looking to get a take on the “new” from someone who had left the city and in Davies’ case this had been in 1973 when he was 28. The director felt that he’d already had his say on his home town with his stunning Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes and had to be persuaded into making a documentary.

He was finally convinced by a vision of Everton Valley high-rise flats accompanied in his head by Peggy Lee singing The Folks Who Live on the Hill. The Lord sings in mysterious ways…  

Of Time and the City emerged as an unique description of growing up amidst post war decline with Davies as the sardonically poetic narrator of his own emergence from this wreckage. Institutions, architects, pop music and, above all, the Catholic Church all let him down but he came through.

Filming St George's Hall

It’s a totally honest film and one without artifice or sorrow – he may not sound it now but Davies is a Scouser alright. One of ten children crammed into a terraced house in Kensington (not the same as London’s version…), he is one of that glorious generation who made something of themselves as the city’s education system contributed to an accelerated social mobility of a kind we’re unlikely to see again.

My parents’ were similarly enabled and moved out from Anfield and Wavertree to the leafy commuter town of Lydiate, damning me forever to be an out-of-town “woollyback” but we move on… Liverpool and transience go hand in hand, but it’s my family’s city and some live there still.

They say that the only people who love Liverpool are the ones that have left…  Davies is not necessarily amongst them and leaving his rose-tinted camera at home, remembers to bring his poison pen. That said, he clearly retains affection for his family and the community he grew up in.

St George's Hall - scale and splendour...

The film opens with lingering shots of the massive classicism of St George’s Hall – the largest contained space in any municipal building of its era and a statement of civic architectural arrogance unrivalled anywhere else in Yorkshire or Lancashire - a fair reflection of the city’s economic importance at a time when it was pretty much second only to London.

Liverpool's Pier Head

There are frequent shots of the overhead railway which ran along the river front giving a south Manhattan appearance to this most American of British cities. As a silent film aside...this was the scene of the World’s first tracking shot with the Lumière brothers placing their camera on the train in 1896 to record the dock side past the old Customs House and long disappeared warehouses signifying Liverpool’s true nature as a port of empire.

The Lumière's 1896 train ride - Princes and Albert Docks

The footage isn't in this film but you can see it here. Sadly, like many Liverpool landmarks, the railway fell victim to short-term planning decisions and was demolished in the mid-50’s disappointing Davies and many other schoolboys.

Davies post-Catholic confessions are emphatically rendered as he describes his “thousands of hours of wasted prayers” and a futile wait for forgiveness from a God that had no time for deviations from the norm. There’s a painful counterpointing showing a deconsecrated church being used as a bar… graven images still in place looking down incongruously on the revellers.

Then he shows the opening of the city’s Catholic Cathedral, an impressively ambitious construction in cold concrete, locally termed Paddy’s Wigwam, bishops in their flowing red dresses struggling against the Irish Sea wind on an unwelcoming mid-60s day.

Not "Betty and Phil"

Davies is also impressively dismissive of the “Betty and Phil show” with his voice over to Elizabeth II’s 1947 wedding detailing the royal couple’s extensive and mind-numbingly prosaic list of gifts… Barely a pause and he details the even greater “waste” at her coronation in 1954. And so it goes… with a quick cut to less well-fed working people eking out their living on rations in austerity Britain… and so it goes.

Davies’ was sustained by creative appreciation with movies his particular passion alongside arousing trips to oggle the wrestlers tight shorts at the Liverpool Stadium. We’re shown a premier at Birkenhead’s Ritzi cinema, as Gregory Peck helps make this "the Hollywood of the North".

Davies’ fondness for popular music did not extend to rock and roll and his sneering  “yeah, yeah, yeah…” tells you all you need to know of his opinion of The Beatles: “…more a firm of North-western accountants than a pop group”. Liking the Mop Tops isn't a legal requirement for Liverpudlians and,as elsewhere, Davies is totally honest - beat music's rough visceral charm evaded him and he much preferred the well-honed popular classics.

But Davies real passion is with classical music and he reels off a string of exotic European names with relish as Hippy Hippy Shake plays over manic scenes from The Cavern. The film begins with the screen being elevated in the Liverpool Philharmonic and you can hear a section from Mahler’s 2nd later in the film (sadly not performed on this occasion by my uncle's former band, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra - the most recorded orchestra in Britain).

Davies with producers Solon Papadopoulos and Roy Boulter at the Phil

On a strictly limited budget, Of Time and the City is a masterpiece of cost-controlled collage with film acquired on a miniscule budget and seamlessly strung together in support of the director’s commentary. Davies shows the demolition of the old Victorian terraces and their replacement by high-rise homogeneity. For families like the Davies’ it meant the enforced exchange of one unsatisfactory way of life with another, more isolated but with arguably better views...

There is disappointment at Bold Street booze-culture but Davies doesn’t appear overtly judgmental of today's city. His ire is reserved for those who forged his difficult years and for the myopic planners who blighted the area for decades. Possibly in spite of himself, the film is dominated by the 40's and 50's of his childhood, until everything comes crashing down in the 60's to be replaced by concrete isolation.

Davies’ culture worked in part because of his family and not circumstance.  He is rightfully proud of the man he has made and his journey beyond. Returning now he feels estranged: it’s not the place that he knew and – presumably – his people have also moved on too. And it’s people that make the place.

He’s not alone and Liverpool has almost halved in population over the last half century as it has evolved into something new. It’s still a place with extremes and beauty... and it endures.

Davies concludes by saying “goodnight ladies” to the “Three Graces” that dominate the Pier Head – these are at least unchanged in spite of all behind them…

I watched the BFI DVD which comes with a wealth of extras including Humphrey Jenning's documentary Listen to Britain which inspired Davies’ approach to the film. I don’t think you have to come from Merseyside to connect – this is a universal take on the nature of change and identity – and whilst Davies knows where he came from he is also a man who truly knows himself best of all.

Of time and the city* - Gumshoe (1971)

*Rose-tinted UK regional references warning…but please bear with me.

After back-to-back viewings of the excellent Otley (now out on US DVD – details below!) and this film, my wife informed her mother and the world in general, that I clearly wanted to go live in late 1960’s Britain. This is an outrageous slur… but may well be (partly) true… I would like to poke around the market stalls in Notting Hill Gate when they held genuine bargains, sup a pint in smoky Newcastle ale houses with Michael Caine and drive a Lotus Europa round Liverpool’s exhaust-fume coated Georgian centre.

How much do we actually want to be in the movies?

The Lotus Europa was just about my favourite car growing up and it’s great to see the lovely white model featured in Gumshoe. It’s perfect for this updated noir that transposes the Maltese Falcon to Merseyside, land of my forefathers. Flashy and fast it was a brave attempt to produce a super car but was still not quite top drawer … for that you’d need an Aston Martin DB8 or an E-Type Jaguar. But we’re also not in London or New York and this is Albert Finney we’re watching and not Humphrey Bogart.


Made in 1971, when Liverpool was still someway off hitting rock-bottom, the former second city (and I know a few who claim it’s still actually first!), provides a suitably grim setting for this wise-cracking detective story. Raymond Chandler comes to Crosby…Sam Spade drinks scotch in Scotty Road, Albert Finney meets the Albert Dock - we never know when to stop do we!

Directed by Stephen Frears (his first feature) and based on a novel by local lad Neville Smith, Gumshoe tells the tale of one Eddie Gimley part-time bingo caller, comedian and wannabe private dick. Albert Finney plays Gimley with quick-firing Bogart wit and a dodgy accent – well he is from Yorkshire after all.


His disapproving brother, William, played with menace (and an even worse Scouse accent) by Frank Findlay is a successful businessman, importing and exporting all kinds of material from his dockland base. William is married to Ellen (the monumental Billie Whitelaw – what an actress!), the Lotus’ driver and former squeeze of Eddie’s. Ellen is trapped, loving both brothers and wanting the one she can’t have.

Eddie advertises his services as a private eye and unknowingly stumbles into a genuine case – hired to take out a local academic (the sublime Caroline Seymour) who is the daughter of an influential South African. So far, so confusing, as the plot runs away with itself and everything and everyone becomes connected with each other: drug smuggling, gun running, African politics all tangled up with an occult bookshop in London and fraternal betrayal…

It packs a lot into a relatively short time and, at a distance of 40 years, feels as much a period piece as the black and white classics of post war Hollywood it apes.

Finney is excellent, accent aside, and wisecracks his way believably through the chaos. He is ably supported by a great cast including Fulton Mackay as a pro hitman and Janice Rule as the ruthless schemer behind most of the mess.

Then there's Bill Dean (who lived down the road from me in the Mersey hinterland of Maghull) who basically plays himself, as Eddie’s club boss, Tommy and a host of genuine local acts performing at The Broadway, the club where Eddie works. There are also brief cameos from a young Maureen Lipman and Wendy Richard who give Eddie the chance to flirt like Bogie with two dolly-bird Bacalls.

Lotus Europa aside though, the real star for me is the city of Liverpool. I’m biased, but the site of Georgian glories such as Gambia Terrace (John Lennon lived there awhile) and a grimy Falkner Square (now whitewashed and a little like Notting Hill North), the still teeming docks and bustling business centre (where my father worked) fills me with nostalgic civic pride.

My wife’s right but I already did live there, albeit as a boy, travelling through these scenes en route to see friends and relatives or to watch football matches. To this extent, Gumshoe provides me with a glimpse of how the grown-ups saw the city. How my parents would have taken it for granted as much as Eddie does.

But Gumshoe works on its own merits and you don’t have to be a soft scouse sentimentalist to appreciate the dialogue, performances and the direction. This is a bold attempt to claim “drama” for a British city in the same way that American films do with ease. These events could happen here – you don’t have to be in LA or Chicago - and they could happen to anyone.

Ultimately the dreamer at the heart of the story becomes a man of action who ends up finding a more certain course for himself and doing some good. Isn’t that more worthwhile than a snuff of nostalgia?

Isn’t that the place were, actually, we’d all like to be?

Gumshoe has been a bit rare over the years, but is now available in decent quality DVD. I’d urge you to try it - some of the attitudes are now unfortunate but the spirit of the thing is universal. Good wins out in the unlikeliest of circumstances.

Otley, the Tom Courtney demi-classic covered elsewhere in this blog, and set a few years’ earlier in swinging London, is also now on DVD. Basic but good quality.

I’d recommend both for hopeless time-travellers, fans of English cities when grime was king and lovers of artfully witty films. Order them now sweetheart, you won’t regret it, not today and certainly not tomorrow or soon...