Terence Davies, the respected British director behind autobiographical films like Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes has died. He was 77.
Davies’ official Instagram confirmed the news on Saturday morning, noting he died peacefully at home after a short illness.
A lot of his work is infused with personal emotional experience, often exploring homosexuality and growing up as a gay, Catholic man in Liverpool, England. In his 2008 documentary, Of Time and the City. the director directly addressed his childhood.
The doc, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival that year, recalled his childhood in the 1950s and 1960s, using archival footage, his own commentary voiceover and classical musical tracks, to put together a project that received rave reviews.
Davies spoke to The Hollywood Reporter at the time about the emotional process that went into the film and how he struggled to balance his faith with his sexuality.
“I went back to my parish church during the filmmaking,” he told THR. “I once prayed to be forgiven until my knees bled, and I hadn’t done anything. You can’t shake it, the guilt. You are ipso facto a sinner because you have original sin in your soul. It is wrong.”
In his review of Davies’ last film, Benediction (2021), THR‘s chief film critic David Rooney sang the director’s praises when referring to his earlier body of work.
“Davies set the bar so high for himself with the unique films that put him on the map starting in the late ’80s,” he wrote, “two exquisitely personal family dramas set in his native Liverpool, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes; the wonderful documentary about his hometown, Of Time and the City; and one of the finest film adaptations of Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth.”
Terence Davies was born on Nov. 10, 1945, as the youngest of 10 children of working-class Catholic parents in Liverpool. His mother was deeply religious and his father died of cancer when Davies was 7 and was “psychotic,” he told The Guardian in a 2021 interview.
The filmmaker attended Coventry Drama School 10 years after leaving school at 16. While he was a student there, he wrote the screenplay for his first autobiographical short, Children, which launched his first trilogy. Madonna and Child and Death and Transfiguration followed, detailing his life from his days as an office clerk in Liverpool in the former and speculating about the circumstances of his death in the latter.
Davies went on to create films like The Neon Bible, Sunset Song, A Quiet Passion and The Deep Blue Sea, which received widespread acclaim, especially for its star, Rachel Wesz. He received awards from several film festivals — including Cannes, Toronto Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival — during his decades-long career.
