Of Time and the City

A portrait of a time, a city and a man; the time being the past, the city, Liverpool and the man, of course, Terence Davies, the acclaimed British film-maker who hasn't made a film in several years because no-one would give him the money and who, now, has been funded to make this, a documentary portrait of his home town, a memoir that ultimately says more about Davies than it does about Liverpool. This is very much a personal project for Davies who not only directed the film but who also wrote the script and narrates it as well. Judiciously, he has used mostly old newsreel footage with some contemporary material to look back at his relationship with Liverpool and the nation as a whole as if to say, this is what shaped him, this is what made him the man and the artist he is. The result, like most of what Davies has done in the past, is a masterpiece; a deeply moving and often very funny study of a vanished age, quite unlike other 'documentaries'. Davies makes no concessions to 'facts', except as he sees them. This, he is telling us, is my view of Liverpool; this, he tells us, is the Liverpool where I grew up and this, he tells us, is the Liverpool he abandoned.

Anyone familiar with Davies' earlier work, particularly "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Long Day Closes", will recognize this as a Davies film from the opening moments, the only difference being that the images on screen are 'real' and not fabricated in a studio. But then, of course, they are only 'real' in so much as Davies chooses to make them real. Like the greatest of documentary film-makers Davies has 'fabricated' reality to suit his own ends. (He is very particular in what he gives us; he has little time for The Beatles or for the Catholic Church while childhood is very much to the fore). And, of course, because the film has more to do with Davies himself than it does with Liverpool, his relationship with the city comes across as somewhat ambivalent. 'We love the things we hate and we hate the things we love' he quotes quite early on and while he presents us with a much idealized vision of Liverpool for much of the time, he never shies away from showing us the poverty and the darker face of the city. One popular song he doesn't use on the soundtrack, (left out, I have no doubt, as being too 'cheesy'), is 'The Way We Were', not the Barbra Striesand version but Gladys Knight's, the one that begins with 'Try to Remember'; "Everybody's talking' about the good old days ... we look back and we think the winters were warmer, the grass was greener, the skies were bluer and smiles were bright").

On the other hand, if the 'autobiographical' trilogy and "Distant Voices, Still Lives" are anything to go by, we know that Davies' own childhood was far from rose-tinted. (The later, "The Long Day Closes", may be seen as being much more about Davies himself and was certainly 'softer' and more homoeroticized that "Distant Voices ..."). Where "Of Time and the City" scores over the 'fiction' films is in Davies' ability to move beyond the family circle to tackle wider issues, taking swipes at both the monarchy and the Catholic Church. I kept thinking, here is a man who will never get a knighthood nor will he ever get to heaven, although I doubt if any loving God would deny entry to so creative a subject as Davies despite his professed disbelief.

"Of Time and the City" is a thing of beauty as much as a painting, icon or piece of classical music and I can think of no director in the history of the cinema who can marry music to imagery as beautifully or as profoundly as Davies, (and when are the CD soundtracks to his films going to be released). "Of Time and the City" is a work of art worthy of its creator and in a year when Liverpool has been designated European Capital of Culture, I can think of no more fitting a tribute.

Terence Davies's documentary "Of Time and the City" should be considered as more of a cinematic poem. This can be a very irritating thing, and Davies does not make it all the way through the film without falling into self-indulgence. However, he does construct a quite beautiful piece of cinema.

This is flawless in areas. Davies's selection of music and images is impeccable, and his voice is a delight to listen to. As a result, a number of sequences are joyous to experience. The slice of the Korean War combined with "He ain't heavy, he's my brother" by The Hollies is my particular favourite. Davies is also, at times, devilishly funny. His description of the coronation of Elizabeth II as the beginning of the "Betty Windsor Show" raised a good laugh from the audience in my screening, and there are many other lines like it.

Davies is at times profound. His own personal writing about his awakening sexuality and the Roman Catholic Church is very interesting and honest. However, as he repeats the formula of poetic monologue leading on to music sequence time after time, he becomes less interesting and more self-indulgent.

Although this is a short film (clocking in at about an hour and a quarter), boredom could prove to be a problem. Nevertheless, this is an impressive and beautiful film. It isn't perfect, nor is it a masterpiece, but it is head and shoulders above many other films and an enjoyable experience.

Terence Davies's films always have wonderful openings. And his new film, "Of Time and the City", is no exception. The screen is dark, but we hear Liszt, and before we know it a cinema screen is rising before our eyes. As its orange curtains open, the colour fades, and we enter a black-and-white world of memory. We see Liverpool in the 19th century in all its imperial grandeur, as "Music for the Royal Fireworks" plays on the soundtrack. But that memory only drags us back to the present, to the contemporary remains of this grandeur, the majestic St. George's Hall, around which Davies's always fluid camera executes a series of breathtaking tracking shots. It is a truly magical opening, a reminder that, when it comes to creating transcendent cinema, Terence Davies is without peer.

The rest of the film could be seen as a kind of critique of these grandiose fantasies, because the film is not about the glory and wealth of Liverpool's architecture, but about its people. One of those people is Davies himself. But he is only one player in a cast of thousands: housewives, children, factory workers, happy holidaymakers, partying teenagers, and even the monarchy (the subject of a wonderfully vitriolic, and utterly deserved, attack at one point in the film). This is a film with real respect for the people of Liverpool, past and present – not only the workers of the 1950s, but also the young people of today. That is one reason why the film is so memorable, and so moving.

Throughout all of Davies's films we have the sense of a director doing something new with cinema: capturing the logic of memory; dramatising and allowing us to experience long-forgotten emotions; and creating a new cinematic style, at once formally rigorous and deeply humane. And like almost all of his films, "Of Time and the City" is both personal and universal. But even though it is composed mainly of archive footage of Liverpool, it would be a mistake to think of it as a documentary about the city, not least because doing so runs the risk of leading know-nothings to complain about the fact that it says nothing about the Toxteth Riots, or Liverpool football club, and so on. The film is personal, and therefore partial. But it is never solipsistic. It resonated with me deeply, even though I was not alive in the 1950s (and have never even been to Liverpool).

It is a film of many memorable moments: the destruction of terraces and the building of high rises, to the sound of "The Folks Who Live on the Hill"; footage of the forgotten generation of men who fought in the Korean War (including Davies's own brother); the extraordinary tracking shot across what seems like the whole sweep of Liverpool, from the shops to the docks. And on one level it is a simple, even straightforward film. But on another level it is very complex, full of fascinating and unexpected transitions and juxtapositions, and demands multiple viewings.

Quite simply, "Of Time and the City" is a masterpiece, which demonstrates – as if it needs demonstrating! – that Terence Davies is one of the greatest film-makers alive today. As you can tell, I loved it!

Of Time and the City is a very personal portrait of the city of Liverpool. Created by Liverpool-born director Terence Davies, funded by Northwest Vision and Media and released in the year that the city holds the status of European Capital of Culture, this film charts the tumultuous story of Liverpool in the time-frame of the director's life. The city's story slides from the high hopes of the post-war era to the ominous onset of the Korean War, plunging into the malaise of tower block housing and declining industries before the gradual revival and regeneration of the late twentieth century.

The film consists largely of archive footage from across the past 60 years, book-ended with some new-filmed footage orchestrated by Davies himself. The old film used in Of Time and the City is superbly edited into a continuously evolving story. There are some astonishing images here, from the vibrancy of the absurdly overcrowded 1950's waterfront to the decay and destruction of council housing in subsequent decades. What really sets this film apart, however, is the unique delivery of Davies's commentary. By turns poetical, polemical and romantic, Davies elevates this film beyond a documentary to create a stirring work of art.

Although often bitter and iconoclastic, Davies possesses a terrific dry sense of humour, which he directs against some of Liverpool's most-recognised exports, including the Beatles and the city's famous football club, as well as the current Queen Elizabeth (or 'the Betty Windsor show' as he terms it). But beyond this invective there is great warmth in Davies's film: it is much more a celebration of the people of Liverpool than the known sights and sounds of Liverpool. The emphasis of the film footage – old and new – is on the lives of the ordinary people living in the city: children playing in crowded streets, families at the seaside, great crowds at sporting events. Davies sets these ordinary goings on to a soundtrack of superb classical music and intersperses them with numerous borrowed lines from literary greats, adapting high art to celebrate the lives of the people in Liverpool. Throughout the film there are also modest fragments of Davies's own story, which emphasises the deeply personal nature of this film.

Of Time and the City is not a methodical history of Liverpool's post-war history – such a film would have to run for a lot longer – and it is shot through with Davies's strong opinions and acerbic wit. His delivery is often challenging to follow, but it makes for a vivid and engrossing film whose depth and complexity merits repeated viewing.

Although I will proceed to contradict myself, this is one of those films that you will either hate or love. Over archive footage of Liverpool, Terrance Davies narrates his personal recollections and reflections of the city along with its history and changes from his birth onwards. It is a personal film for him no doubt because it is not so much of a "documentary" as it is a piece of poetry over images – it would not be out of place as an art installation somewhere (if it were structured and delivered differently). It is hard to review this because for some people the voice, the words and the images will combine to create a wonderfully personal experience that they are drawn into, more of an experience than just a film. However to other viewers (who will be unfairly told they "don't get it" or "aren't smart enough" and should "go back to Transformers 2") this will come over as pointless, annoying and right up itself.

And here is my contradiction, because I fell somewhere in the middle of this, wanting to love it but ultimately finding myself totally on the outside looking in. Throughout the whole film I was finding it sporadically interesting, whether in the footage or the narration there was stuff that stopped me getting bored. However I also had this niggling feeling that the film was being deliberately obtuse in what it was doing and that, in being so personal, Davies had forgotten that this was a film being sold to an audience, not just something he is making for free. By this I mean that there isn't anything that offers the viewer an olive branch to get into it – if you don't love it early then it will likely just leave you behind. At times the film does smack heavily of being pretentious for the sake of it and, while the negative voices and overly negative here, I can see the point of those that attack it as such.

Perhaps that is fine though, not every film will appeal to everyone and this is an art film that will always draw a small audience no matter where it is shown. I know many people loved it and believe me when I say that I did want to but somehow it just didn't work for me. I was left feeling remote from the subject of any scene and, although some aspects still interested me, at worst it did come over as a little pretentious. Worth a look for something different but it is certainly not for everyone.