Distant Voices Still Lives [Blu-ray]

Director: Terence Davies Terence Davies

Overview

Set in 1940s England, Distant Voices/Still Lives is a compassionate look at a radically dysfunctional family. The son and his mother must endure the casual and overt cruelties of the bull-necked father. The ongoing abuse takes its toll in the form of failed marriages and misguided attempts at seeking security outside the family unit. As was the case with his earlier short subject trilogy (The Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration), director Terence Davies based much of the material on his own life, combining rheumy-eyed cynicism with soft-edged nostalgia (the musical track, drawn from popular wartime songs, is particularly evocative).

Product Details

Release Date:	10/23/2018
UPC:	0760137176787
Original Release:	1988
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	Arrow Video
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Language:	English
Time:	1:24:00
Sales rank:	22,155

Special Features

Brand new 4K restoration, carried out by the British Film Institute and approved by writer-director Terence Davies; Commentary by writer-director Terence Davies; Interview with Davies; Interview with art director Miki van Zwanenberg; Introduction by critic Mark Kermode; Images of Liverpool, three films from the BFI National Archive: Homes for Workers (1939), Liverpool (1941) and Worker and War-Front No. 3 (1942); Brand new Q&A with Terence Davies, conducted by Geoff Andrew recorded at the BFI Southbank; Image gallery; Original theatrical and 2018 re-release trailers

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Pete Postlewaite	Actor
Freda Dowie	Mother
Angela Walsh	Eileen,Tony as a child
Dean Williams	Tony
Lorraine Ashbourne	Maisie
Debi Jones	Micky
Marie Jelliman	Jingles
Sally Davies	Young Eileen
Susan Flanagan	Maisie as a Child
Michael Starke	Dave
Vincent MaGuire	George
Antonia Mallen	Rose
Chris Darwin	Red
Andrew Schofield	Les,Actor
Anne Dyson	Granny
Jean Boht	Aunty Nell
Alan Bird	Baptismal Priest
Pauline Quirke	Doreen
Matthew Long	Mr. Spaull
Frances Dell	Margie
Carl Chase	Uncle Ted
Roy Ford	Wedding Priest
John Carr	Registrar
John Michie	Soldier
Jeanette Moseley	Barmaid
Ina Clough	Licensee
Pete Postlethwaite	le père
Judith Barker	Rose's Family
Chris Benson	Rose's Family
Terry Melia	Military Policeman
Lorraine Michaels	Rose's Family
John Thomalla	Military Policeman
Sammy Fain	Composer

Technical Credits

Terence Davies

Terence Davies	Director,Screenwriter
Jennifer Howarth	Producer
Colin MacCabe	Executive Producer,Producer
Alf Joint	Stunts
Richard Robert	Special Effects
Colin Nicolson	Sound/Sound Designer
Moya Burns	Sound/Sound Designer
Jennifer Howard	Producer
Colin McCabe	Producer

Editorial Reviews

Terence Davies' semi-autobiographical first full-length feature announced the arrival of a unique talent, one who would fuse the lyrical, poetic style of such maverick directors as Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway with the kitchen-sink melodrama endemic to the majority of postwar British cinema. Distant Voices, Still Lives unfolds with the ease of a memoir, yet there's nothing literal or obvious about it. Davies is much more interested in the signifiers of nostalgia and memory than the memories themselves: dramatic, often violent episodes are doled out in vignettes, interrupted or underscored by extensive use of pop songs of the era. But the music provides no solace from the grim goings-on of the intentionally anonymous family Davies chronicles; although the characters are all given brief respites from their unending, sepia-toned misery, the director undercuts any threat of treacly, romanticized revisionism. Instead, Davies subtly suggests the ways that family members prop each other up, cut each other down, and weather the storm of their upbringing, and,in doing so, his film acquires a cumulative sense of hope and understanding.