Of Time and the City

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. These lines, from “Little Gidding,” the last of T. S. Eliot's “Four Quartets,” have an abstract, mystical cast. But when the British filmmaker Terence Davies recites them in his cinematic memoir “Of Time and the City,” they acquire a bracing and poignant specificity. [...] Vai alla recensione »

"Of Time and the City": ode à la gloire déchue de Liverpool Le rideau rouge d'un vieux cinéma s'ouvre sur le générique de ce film en noir et blanc, au rythme du piano de Liszt. Enchaînement sur un défilé de fastueux bâtiments, au son des grandes pompes de Haendel. Cette ville honorée comme une cité antique, nous n'en sortirons pas, des premières images la montrant en 1800, du temps de sa splendeur, [...] Vai alla recensione »

Un altro «giurassico», Terence Davies, classe '45, l'inglese dall'umorismo perfetto, poetico e sognatore che girò venti anni fa Distant voices still lives ci accompagna con il suo cinema in un posto non più aperto al pubblico. Il passato. Liverpool, la sua città nel film della selezione ufficiale Of time and city. Colonna sonora tra Brahms e i Beatles, citazioni, poesie, aforismi, voce fuori campo [...] Vai alla recensione »

Of Time and the City" is a difficult film to describe but a distinct pleasure to experience. A cinematic essay, a documentary and a memory piece, all at the same time, it is more than anything an unapologetically poetic film that allows British director Terence Davies to ruminate on Liverpool, the city of his birth, and his own life and times there.

IN “Of Time and the City,” a new documentary by Terence Davies, the city is his hometown, Liverpool, and the time, true to form for this most Proustian of filmmakers, is the past. “The golden moments pass and leave no trace,” Mr. Davies, who narrates the film, says at one point, quoting Chekhov. But his backward-glancing movies are proof to the contrary.