His first film since House of Mirth in 2000, Terence Davies' elegiac documentary Of Time and the City is a snapshot of memories from his formative years in Liverpool, England, a city mostly known to the world as the home turf of the Beatles. Consisting of archival footage, personal photographs, and contemporary video, Of Time and the City is not meant as a historical document or a linear chronology of events but as a poetic tribute to the city in which he lived from 1945 until 1973, a tribute, however, that is unfortunately tinged with bitterness toward the institutions that made his life as a gay man full of anguish.Proclaiming that "the world was young and oh how we laughed", Davies shows us glimpses of early days at the beach with extras serving as stand-ins for his family, football matches with their huge crowds, and many, many children with smiling faces. There are also photos of working class families going about their daily chores, carrying their laundry down the street to neighborhood laundries on the top of their head, and buildings defaced with prominent graffiti. To provide context for the images, the film's soundtrack offers bits of popular and classical music, operatic arias, excerpts from radio programs, and Davies' own narration of passages from Yeats, Joyce, Engels, Chekhov, Jung, and Eliot, all delivered in a tone of solemn incantation.Davies remembers his love for American movies and how he was addicted to Hollywood musicals, westerns, and dramas when he was a young man. Highlighting the appearance of Gregory Peck at the Ritz Theatre across the river from Liverpool, Davies recounts that "my love was as muscular as for my Catholicism, without any of the drawbacks." Raised as a devout Catholic, the director, now 64, seems to reserve his best barbs for the institution that thwarted his self expression, telling us that religion is "all a lie" and that he has become a "born-again atheist" even while acknowledging his guilt for going to wrestling matches to sneak a feel at passing bodies.To the music of the Ewan McColl song "Dirty Old Town" from 1949 that evokes the factories of northern England, the film shows us the poverty and the slums that were torn down in the 1960s only to be replaced by sterile high rise projects which did little to alleviate the poverty. "We had hoped for paradise", Davies proclaims, "we got the anus mundi", a phrase that does not require a translation. He also does not spare the British monarchy from his venom, calling the coronation in 1953, "Betty and Phil and a thousand flunkies." He notes the amount of money that was "wasted on the monarchy...privileged to the last," while the rest of the population, "survived in some of the worst slums in Europe!" As for the Fab Four, the only mention they are given is a condescending "yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah," when they are shown in a Liverpool gig. Following the tradition of what he calls "the British genius for creating the dismal," Davies does nothing to lighten the gloom or show the resiliency of the folks in that "dirty old town" but offers only a decidedly skewed look at a vibrant creative city, distorted by his own memories of isolation. Calling his film his "chanson d'amour for all that has passed," Davies fails to communicate the warmth and love implicit in that label. He quotes Chekhov that "the golden moments pass and leave no trace", yet fails to see that for the golden moments to leave their mark, one needs to look past the anger and expand one's vision to see the "Penny Lanes" and the "Strawberry Fields Forever".

I found this excellent Terence Davies film mainly for my father, a now 75 year old scouser with a hankering for the city of his birth.My father, Like writer and director Davies was born into the city a Catholic, and had a typical Liverpool upbringing throughout the war years and beyond until joining the army as a boy soldier in the mid fifties.I sat and watched this magnificent film with him..Davies chosen words and music, evocative of more than one childhood clearly.It is a masterwork and not just for those of the city, or even for those of the era.....Liverpool is a stunning city, unlike any other place on earth and fully deserving of this piece.Davies waxes lyrically and spits venomous cynicism in equal measure throughout this highly regarded work.See it when you can.

Sorry, couldn't appreciate it. I'm originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, but my husband grew up in Manchester (in the 50s and 60s), and I do like both the old and new bits of his home city. It's mainly the author's personality that happened to irritate me the most - I found him too pretentious (starting from that theatre curtain episode in the beginning) and felt like he had made this film basically for himself. It was too lengthy, there were many repetitive shots and arie all over the place (drowning the little girls' song which I actually wanted to hear). Rationally, I'm taking Davies's point but emotionally, I couldn't wait till the film was over. Talking about life experience similar to Davies's, I much prefer the late Dutch writer Gerard Reve.

I'm usually a patient viewer who has no problem with films in which nothing much happen. In this case, however, I was expecting a more traditional memoir in which the director tells a personal story. What I got was a series of images and music (classical and vintage popular songs) interspersed with a sparse narration of quotes, anecdotes, and philosophical ramblings.It's supposed to be a lyrical visual poem evoking the director's repressed homosexual youth in an industrial hell. To me, however, it was just a bunch of random images screaming "Look here. This is Art! ART!" I guess that one man's masterpiece is another man's boring, self-indulgent, pretentious twaddle.