Rest in peace: British filmmaker Terence Davies passes away at 77
British filmmaker Terence Davies known for Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Deep Blue Sea and The Long Day Closes has passed away. He was 77. Though his films received a lot of praise for their sympathetic portrayals of LGBT life, Catholicism, and other common topics, they didn’t win a lot of awards.
Born into a large Catholic family in Liverpool, Davies left school at 16 and worked for 10 years as a clerk before attending Coventry Drama School. His first short, Children, was autobiographical, and written while he was at school. He then attended the National Film School, where he made Madonna and Child, another autobiographical work about his years as a clerk.
For The Neon Bible in 1995, Davies adapted a novel by John Kennedy Toole, and it received a Bafta nomination for best British film. After Of Time and the City, a documentary that was screened outside of competition at Cannes in 2008 and received a lot of praise, Davies switched to documentaries. The documentary paid homage to his hometown of Liverpool by including several literary, musical, and cinematic allusions.
The Deep Blue Sea, an adaptation of a play by Terence Rattigan, won the NY Film Critics Circle award for Rachel Weisz, and again garnered highly positive reviews. In 2015, he was finally able to complete Sunset Song and followed it with A Quiet Passion, about Emily Dickinson, and Benediction, based upon poet Siegfried Sassoon.
