The screening on Tuesday 21 October will be introduced by season curator Ben Roberts
In 1977, as new students at the National Film School, the first thing we had to do was watch one another’s films. The slight, diffident and very polite man sitting next to me appeared to be doubled-up with shyness and apprehension. Oh dear, I thought, I bet he has made a tentative film. A few moments later Children (for my fellow student was Terence Davies) slammed out of the screen with such power, intensity and passion that no one at the school could see Terence in the same way again.
Shot in stark black and white, with uncompromising honesty, the only films I had seen that were at all similar were Bill Douglas’ trilogy My Childhood, My Ain Folk and My Way Home. Children – like the two earlier Douglas films – conveyed the pain and bewilderment of a powerless childhood and, as with Douglas, Davies had been discovered by the then head of the BFI Production Board, Mamoun Hassan. Terence wrote Children while a mature student at drama school in Coventry, and sent the script off into the blue. Mamoun summoned Terence to London: ‘I shall give you £8,500 to make this film and not a penny more.’ ‘Who’s going to direct it?’ Terry asked. ‘You are,’ was the reply. Mamoun (who became one of our mentors at the school, and with whom we laughed so much at a screening of Kind Hearts and Coronets that Terence fell off his stool) had recognised that the precision and intensity of the images in Terence’s writing revealed a potential film director of distinction.
A novice behind the camera (the eye-line match rule was a mystery to him), Terence wanted Children to look like a Vermeer, and with this in mind he embarked on a collaboration with Bill Diver as lighting cameraman – a partnership which continued for the next five films, with Bill sometimes cutting, sometimes lighting and on Distant Voices (with special union dispensation) doing both. Even then it was obvious that Children was the work of a mature filmmaker and that his role at the film school was one of consolidating and refining his talent. While the rest of us were playing around trying to find our voice and talent, Terence moved immediately on to Madonna and Child. He was always clear that this film would form the second part of a trilogy. Thus, remarkably, Madonna and Child was made as a student film. After watching a cut of Madonna with visiting tutor Alexander Mackendrick I remember somebody asking him, ‘Is it a gay film?’ ‘It’s the least gay “gay” film I’ve ever seen,’ was the reply.
Certain moments in Madonna and Child are possibly the bravest and most exceptional sequences to have been made at the film school. In particular the scenes set in a men’s lavatory, and the track across the church and around the stations of the cross which are accompanied by the voiceover of the tattooist, have immense power to shock, disturb and arouse compassion. The acting is exquisite and I cannot write of Terry Sullivan’s performance without my eyes filling with tears.
When Terence left the school, like most of us he had very little money, but he persevered in trying to make the third part of his trilogy. I think this final film, Death and Transfiguration, is the most remarkable achievement. The finance for the project was raised in dribs and drabs – Maureen McCue of Greater London Arts gave her entire minuscule film budget, and people worked on the project for the love of it. Wilfrid Brambell was persuaded to play the dying Robert Tucker, giving a moving, dignified performance. ‘Take your teeth out, Wilfrid,’ Terry asked, and, surprisingly and appropriately, Brambell did. With admirable tenacity and self-sacrifice Terence managed to shoot the film, with the BFI stepping in at the end like a good fairy to provide finishing costs and to distribute it.
I remember seeing a cut of Death and Transfiguration and being stunned by the opening sequence – a wide-shot of the Liverpool sky, the radiator of Tucker’s mother’s hearse, Tucker’s hands folded quietly, the wheels of the funeral cars with their shining hub caps, Tucker’s grief-stricken face, the crematorium gates as the cortege drives in, the furnace doors closing on the coffin and its lonely wreath – the images cut to Doris Day singing ‘It All Depends on You’.
The trilogy did the rounds of the international festival circuits and was often seen – in the States in particular – as an unnecessarily pessimistic piece, receiving limited arthouse distribution as a result. In a ‘glad to be gay’ climate, the insecurity, guilt and downright loneliness so astutely expressed in these films was an unfashionable stance. Because Terence dared to show the pain of growing up Catholic and homosexual in working-class Liverpool in the ’50s and early ’60s, the films were not celebrated enough. Terence once told me that when he recognised his homosexuality he knelt in prayer for so long that his knees bled – this pain is conveyed in the spirit of his films.
Jennifer Howarth, Sight and Sound, September 1994
Children
Directed by: Terence Davies
©/Production: British Film Institute Production Board
Executive Production Supervisor: Geoffrey Evans
Production: Peter Shannon
Production Assistant: Rick Thomas
Assistant Director: Dave Wheeler
Continuity: Anna Maysoon Pachachi
Written by: Terence Davies
Cameraman: William Diver
Assistant Cameraman: Chris Evans
Editors: Digby Rumsey, Sarah Ellis
Cor Anglais Soloist: Stella Dickinson
Sound Recordist: Digby Rumsey
With special thanks to: Alan Dosser and The Everyman Theatre Co., Notre Dame School, The McKee School
Cast:
Phillip Mawdsley
Nick Stringer
Val Lilley
Robin Hooper (Robert, aged 23)
Colin Hignett
Robin Bowen
Harry Wright
Phillip Joseph
Trevor Eve
Linda Beckett
Bill Maxwell
Elizabeth Estensen
Malcolm Hughes
Katherine Fahey
Marjorie Rowlandson
Ann Kiesler
UK 1976©
46 mins
Digital
Madonna and Child
Directed by: Terence Davies
©/Production Company: National Film School
Production: Mike Maloney
Assistant Director: Kees Ryninks
Continuity: Victoria McBain
Written by: Terence Davies
Cameraman: William Diver
Assistant Cameraman: Sergio Leon
Grip: Tim Rolt
Editor: Mick Audsley
Sound Recordist: Antoinette de Bromhead
Dubbing Editor: Geoff Hogg
With special thanks to: Sacred Heart Parish Church, H.A. Harben & Co., The Harold Ackerley Studio, Canon Kennedy Primary School
Cast:
Terry O’Sullivan (Robert Tucker)
Sheila Raynor (Robert’s mother)
Paul Barber
John Meynell
Brian Ward
Dave Cooper
Mark Walton
Mal Jefferson
Lovette Edwards
Rita Thatchery
Eddie Ross
UK 1980©
30 mins
Digital
Death and Transfiguration
Directed by: Terence Davies
This film was financially assisted by: The Greater London Arts Association, The British Film Institute
Executive Producer: Maureen McCue
Production: Claire Barwell
Assistant Director: Aisling Walsh
Continuity: Helena Barrett, Carine Adler
Written by: Terence Davies
Cameraman: William Diver
Assistant Cameramen: Gil Aufray, Phillipe Baylaucq
Editor: William Diver
Assistant Editors: Michael Pike, Toby Benton
Art Director: Miki van Zwanenberg
Assistant Art Director: Rachel Taite
Make-up Adviser: Fae Hammond
Performing ‘It All Depends on You’: Doris Day
Sound Recording: Mohammed Hassini, Charles Patey, Mark Frith
With special thanks to: Michael Samuelson (Samuelson Films Service), The National Film and Television School, The City of Liverpool, Bethnal Green Hospital, St Mary Abbotts Hospital
Cast:
Wilfrid Brambell (Robert Tucker)
Terry O’Sullivan
Iain Munro
Jeanne Doree
Chrissy Roberts
Virginia Donovan
Carol Christmas
Angela Rooks
Brian Gilbert
Katharine Schofield
Ron Metcalfe
Lisa Parker
James Wilde
Ron Jones
James Culshaw
Marie Smith
Jim Penman
Gerry Shaw
Mandy Walsh
Paul Oakley
children from the McKee School
UK 1983©
26 mins
Digital
Restoration supported by Simon and Harley Hessel
With thanks to
James Dowling, John Taylor, Dan Copley,
Sophie Smith, Edge Hill University
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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