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Terence Davies and the Cinema: An Intertextual Study of His Films James Andrew Ballands PhD University of York Theatre, Film and Television September 2015 Abstract This thesis examines the oeuvre of the British filmmaker Terence Davies between 1976 and 2011. Overall, his work from this period can be separated into two distinct categories: autobiographical films and literary adaptations. Whereas previous critical works on this writer-director have often framed him as an auteur due to the considerable creative control that he exerts over his films, this thesis problematizes such a reading by situating his body of work within a larger intertextual field. Within this field, I include other films, literary texts and pieces of music, in order to explore how other cultural influences have been channelled into Davies’s filmmaking. I also explore the idea that his memories of growing up in Liverpool – particularly during the 1950s – constitute another intertext within his autobiographical films. Similarly, I demonstrate how considering the creative input of his key collaborators – including producers, cinematographers, editors and production designers – illuminates both Davies’s approach to filmmaking and the dense construction of his films as texts. Unlike other critical writings on Davies’s career, my thesis considers the audience’s engagement with his films and the readings they generate from them. This thesis adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to Davies’s films by engaging with various branches of study within the arts, including post-structuralist theory, autobiographical studies, adaptation studies, music theory, auteur theory and production studies. Furthermore, this thesis includes insights that have been gathered from eighteen original interviews with individuals involved in the making of Terence Davies’s films – including one with the filmmaker himself. 2 List of Contents Abstract 2 List of Illustrations 4 Acknowledgements 9 Author’s Declaration 10 Introduction 11 Chapter 1: Intertextuality 30 Chapter 2: Autobiographical Filmmaking 70 Chapter 3: Literary Adaptation 114 Chapter 4: Sound and Music 152 Chapter 5: Authorship and Collaboration 194 Conclusion 235 Appendix 1 – List of Interviewees (in alphabetical order) 246 Appendix 2 – Terence Davies’s Filmography 248 Appendix 3 – General Filmography 252 Bibliography 258 3 List of Illustrations CHAPTER ONE Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas 33 Pablo Picasso’s Las Meninas, after Velázquez 1 33 Dressed to Kill 34 Vertigo 34 The Skin I Live In 35 Eyes Without a Face 35 Goodfellas 37 The Great Train Robbery 37 Letter from an Unknown Woman 41 The House of Mirth 41 Children 45 My Childhood 45 Children 46 My Childhood 46 Children 50 Cries and Whispers 50 Distant Voices, Still Lives 51 Cries and Whispers 51 Madonna and Child 51 Cries and Whispers 51 Salvador Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross 52 4 The Long Day Closes 52 Two stills from Brief Encounter 54 Brief Encounter 56 Now, Voyager 56 Distant Voices, Still Lives 58 The Long Day Closes 58 Brief Encounter 59 Flames of Passion 59 Three stills from Young at Heart 63 CHAPTER TWO The Four Hundred Blows 74 Citizen Kane 76 Two stills from The Garden 80 Children 83 Children 84 Germany Year Zero 85 Mouchette 86 The Silence 86 Madonna and Child 87 Death and Transfiguration 89 Three stills from Death and Transfiguration 90 Two stills from Hiroshima mon amour 91 Two stills from Distant Voices, Still Lives 92 5 Distant Voices, Still Lives 95 Two stills from Distant Voices, Still Lives 96 Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing 98 Singin’ in the Rain 99 Guys and Dolls 99 Two stills from The Long Day Closes 102 Meet Me in St. Louis 104 The Long Day Closes 104 The Long Day Closes 106 Two stills from Of Time and the City 108 Two stills from Listen to Britain 110 CHAPTER THREE The Neon Bible 125 The Long Day Closes 125 The Neon Bible 127 The Night of the Hunter 127 The Night of the Hunter 128 The Neon Bible 128 Opening Night 131 The Neon Bible 131 Four stills from The House of Mirth 136 The House of Mirth 141 The Portrait of a Lady 141 6 Separate Tables 146 Brief Encounter 147 The Deep Blue Sea 147 CHAPTER FOUR The Neon Bible 157 Distant Voices, Still Lives 162 The Long Day Closes 162 Casablanca 166 Apocalypse Now 169 Three stills from Children 172 Death and Transfiguration 174 Two stills from Distant Voices, Still Lives 175 Distant Voices, Still Lives 177 The Long Day Closes 177 Two stills from Pennies from Heaven 178 Two stills from The Neon Bible 180 Two stills from Of Time and the City 181 Two stills from The Deep Blue Sea 182 Distant Voices, Still Lives 183 The Deep Blue Sea 183 Of Time and the City 185 Così fan tutte 187 7 CHAPTER FIVE Rebecca 206 Letter from an Unknown Woman 206 Brief Encounter 206 It Always Rains on Sunday 206 Children 209 Distant Voices, Still Lives 210 Vermeer’s The Milkmaid 211 The Long Day Closes 211 Rembrandt’s Belshazzar's Feast 212 The Long Day Closes 212 Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Agricultural Worker in Marysville 212 Migrant Camp (Trying to Figure Out His Year’s Earnings) Walker Evans’s Farmer’s Kitchen 212 Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World 213 Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun 213 John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler 214 The House of Mirth 214 Two stills from The Long Day Closes 218 The Deep Blue Sea 221 8 Acknowledgements I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Duncan Petrie for his unwavering support, patience and good humour. Throughout my PhD, he has been a constant source of encouragement and practical advice. Professor Andrew Higson offered me excellent advice at crucial points in the development of this thesis, and I am grateful for his insights. I would like to thank all of the eighteen people who agreed to be interviewed me – particularly Terence Davies himself – as their input has enriched my understanding of his work considerably. Most of all, I would like to thank my mam and dad for their love and support. 9 Author’s Declaration I declare that all written work and use of expression is, unless cited, my own. I confirm that none of this work has been submitted for any other academic award at this or any other institution. 10 Introduction ___________________________________________________________________ Between 1976 and 2011, the British filmmaker Terence Davies wrote and directed three short films, five feature-length films and a documentary. Overall, his oeuvre can be separated into two distinct groups: autobiographical films and literary adaptations. His autobiographical works consist of the short films Children (UK, 1976), Madonna and Child (UK, 1980) and Death and Transfiguration (UK, 1983), which were released collectively as The Terence Davies Trilogy in 1984; the feature-length films Distant Voices, Still Lives (UK/West Germany, 1988) and The Long Day Closes (UK, 1992), and the documentary Of Time and the City (UK, 2008). His literary adaptations are The Neon Bible (UK, 1995), based on John Kennedy Toole’s 1989 novella, The House of Mirth (UK/USA/France/Germany, 2000), based on Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel, and The Deep Blue Sea (USA/UK, 2011), based on Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play. Despite the relatively small size of his oeuvre, Terence Davies is widely recognised as one of the greatest British filmmakers of his generation. In a 2003 poll conducted by the film critics of The Guardian newspaper, he was voted the tenth greatest director in the world – the highest charting British filmmaker on that list.1 In 2002, Distant Voices, Still Lives – Davies’s most admired work – was the only British entry to feature in a poll taken by the film magazine Sight & Sound of the ten finest films of the previous twenty-five years.2 In 2011, the latter film was also voted the third greatest British film of all time – behind Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, UK, 1973) and The Third Man (Carol Reed, UK, 1949), respectively – in a poll conducted by Time Out magazine.3 In an interview with the scholar and film producer Colin MacCabe, the French auteur Jean-Luc Godard expressed his long-held view that the British ‘never were gifted filmmakers’, but made a single exception for Distant Voices, Still Lives.4 11 It is my contention that Davies’s work has been under-explored by scholars, particularly in light of the high critical esteem in which his films are held. In many of the books devoted to twentieth-century British cinema, Davies is conspicuous by his absence. He does not feature at all, for example, in Jim Leach’s British Film (2004) – unlike his art- house contemporaries Derek Jarman, Sally Potter and Peter Greenaway – or John Hill’s extensively researched book British Cinema in the 1980s: Issues and Themes (1999). Furthermore, he receives only cursory mentions in such books as Steve Blandford’s Film, Drama and the Break-Up of Britain (2007), Robert Murphy’s edited collection British Cinema of the 90s (2000) and Amy Sargeant’s British Cinema: A Critical History (2005). This is not to suggest, however, that Davies has been ignored completely by academia. At the time of writing, two books have been written about his filmmaking career, both of which are entitled Terence Davies: one by Wendy Everett in 2004 and another by Michael Koresky in 2014. Paul Farley also wrote a short monograph on Distant Voices, Still Lives in 2006 as part of the BFI Film Classics series and there are a number of anthologised essays and articles that focus upon different aspects of his filmmaking career.5 Nevertheless, I would argue that there has been a lack of sustained scholarly engagement with Davies’s work given his standing among film critics and his peers, particularly when one considers the numerous books that have been written about his contemporaries such as Peter Greenaway and the late Derek Jarman.6 Naturally, this raises the question of why Davies’s body of work has been comparatively neglected, for which there are several possible explanations.

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