Terence Davies is the original local hero. Growing up working-class in
Liverpool in the 1940s and 1950s, queer in the 1960s, and making a
trilogy of films about the experience cemented him in English cinema
consciousness. Distant Voices, Still Lives is the Dying Swan of the
kitchen-sink genre, harking back to the reality behind Cathy Come
Home. It is grim but meticulous, epithets equally applicable to
Davies' far-from-home The Neon Bible and House Of Mirth. The latter was
shot in present-day Glasgow, albeit replacing poverty with opulence.
The struggle of the human spirit still commands the screen, in all its
detail.
