RE-RELEASED IN A NEWLY RESTORED VERSION, THIS POIGNANT 1988 MASTERPIECE BY UNDERRATED DIRECTOR TERENCE DAVIES IS UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE IN BRITISH CINEMA.

Through a fragmented series of almost ritualistic gatherings drawn form his own family’s memories of the 1940s and ’50s, Davis paints a vivid picture of a working class Liverpudlian family controlled by a stern, unforgiving patriarch who lords it over wife, son and daughter with mute menace and brute force. These stark, impressionistic vignettes are explained, counterpointed and undercut by the popular songs of the period, sung—communally in pubs or at parties and privately during work—not only as entertainment but as a sign of vitality and courage in the face of hardship. With this new restoration by the British Film Institute’s National Archive, the stunning images look especially superb. Distant Voices, Still Lives is an ambitious, intelligent and profoundly moving work created by a poet with film-making in his very blood.—Geoff Andrew.