In 2008 the City of Liverpool was the European City of Culture and filmmaker Terence Davies was invited to create a history of the place; the film Of Time and the City was the result. He was born a little after World War II had ended, so his most vivid childhood memories were of the nineteen-fifties, when he divided time between home, school, the Church and the cinema, the latter becoming his passion, so much so that it eclipsed his religious leanings, "Years spent wasted in prayer" as he now describes them. All down the years Davies has watched his hometown change, but does he even recognise it now?
It's all about memory, this film, and in remembering the past Davies used the personal to paint the bigger picture, in that his life was at once typical of his generation's in Liverpool, and somehow apart from it, as his personality emerged and he found his own way of expressing himself. Really this is a selection of clips from the archives, just over an hour of images that meant a lot to him, and that was what he attempted to convey, how it was to grow up in a city that was doing its own growing - and declining for that matter - and make us relate our own formative years to Davies' experiences.
All the way through the soundtrack consists of music, either fifties pop standards (but not much of the rock of the decade, it never appealed to him) or the classical pieces he came to appreciate once pop culture headed off in a different direction to the one he was interested in. A bit like his rejection of the Church, and possibly more contentious to those who like to think Liverpudlian culture began and ended with The Beatles. But it is the holy side of things that takes up most of Davies' anger, as he feels he had frittered away far too long trying to get an absent God to provide him with the salvation, and therefore the perfect life, he thought he deserved for being a good boy.
Of course, life doesn't work like that, and Davies recognised he wasn't going to receive his reward in heaven largely because he was homosexual, and that at a time when it was still illegal in Britain to be gay. He mentions going to see the wrestling for the sexual thrill it offered rather than the sporting excitement of seeing two men grapple with each other (which may have been the unspoken attraction for quite a few of the audience of the day, who knows?), but it was the movies where his heart truly lay. It may come across as odd that for all the director's praise of cinema it does not feature particularly heavily in the footage here, with the odd premiere or event shown, but there's a reason for that.
Much of Davies' career had been in the service of those films that had influenced him as a boy, recreating the feeling those golden age works had on him, and with Of Time and the City he put the people of Liverpool up on the silver screen as the stars of their own story. It's not always a pretty story, as clip upon clip of sickening poverty the place had suffered down the decades was presented, but the message is that no matter how bad things were, or how good, back when you were becoming aware of the world, it's always something you will wish to return to, even as you acknowledge that is simply not possible. Davies ends the film realising that he cannot see in the modern, much improved Liverpool the places he hailed from, yet continues to regard it as his home, as the poetry and quotations mount up. If you cannot relate, then this may not have much to say to you, though the implication is that it will in time.
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