The Long Day Closes

The Long Day Closes

Directed by Terence Davies • 1992 • United Kingdom
Starring Leigh McCormack, Marjorie Yates, Anthony Watson

THE LONG DAY CLOSES is the most gloriously cinematic expression of the unique sensibility of Terence Davies, widely celebrated as Britain’s greatest living filmmaker. Suffused with both enchantment and melancholy, this autobiographical film takes on the perspective of a quiet, lonely boy growing up in Liverpool in the 1950s. But rather than employ a straightforward narrative, Davies jumps in and out of time, swoops into fantasies and fears, summons memories and dreams. A singular filmic tapestry, THE LONG DAY CLOSES is an evocative, movie- and music-besotted portrait of the artist as a young man.

The Long Day Closes
  • The Long Day Closes

    Directed by Terence Davies • 1992 • United Kingdom
    Starring Leigh McCormack, Marjorie Yates, Anthony Watson

    THE LONG DAY CLOSES is the most gloriously cinematic expression of the unique sensibility of Terence Davies, widely celebrated as Britain’s greatest living filmmaker. Suffused with both en...

Extras

  • Terence Davies, 1992

    In this 1992 episode of the British television series “The South Bank Show,” THE LONG DAY CLOSES director Terence Davies discusses growing up in Liverpool, his love for Hollywood musicals, and the evolution of his cinematic style. It also features on-set footage and interviews with actor Leigh Mc...

  • Colin MacCabe on THE LONG DAY CLOSES

    In this interview, conducted in New York in 2013, film critic and professor Colin MacCabe describes his former role as the head of the BFI Production Board, which funded director Terence Davies’s early films DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION and DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES. As an executive producer of TH...

  • Christopher Hobbs on THE LONG DAY CLOSES

    In this interview, production designer Christopher Hobbs describes building sets for THE LONG DAY CLOSES, creating the special effects, and the unique process of reconstructing director Terence Davies’s childhood memories. The interview was conducted at Hobbs’s home in France in September 2013.

  • Dissolves in THE LONG DAY CLOSES

    Professor Kristin Thompson explores the ways in which dissolves allow Terence Davies to mimic the fluidity and emotional texture of memory in his elegiac coming-of-age film.