Low Culture Podcast: Terence Davies’ Of Time And The City

This month, John Doran and Luke Turner head to the North West to discuss Terence Davies’ portrait of the city he grew up in

Of Time And The City is a documentary commissioned for Liverpool’s stint as City of Culture in 2008, made by the director Terence Davies for the tiny budget of £200k. Made of archive footage and an rich soundtrack, this is a subjective portrait of the city that Davies grew up in in the years following the Second World War, capturing the energy of the port against industrial decline, community, and an extremely amusing dismissal of The Beatles as “not so much a rock group as a firm of provincial solicitors”. It’s an interesting, if at times slightly flawed film, that exists as an antidote to those weird social media accounts that post pictures of The Old Days as an entry point to racist, nationalist opinions. John, who was born in Liverpool in the generation after Davies, guides us through the film, explaining the presence of Catholicism and veneration of saints that looms over the city, and how the visit of the Pope during his childhood was an inverse of Beatlemania. tQ’s editors discuss the politics around footage of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and how the Liverpool John grew up in might have been overshadowed by religion and violence, but was a magical, visionary place captured in the work of the likes of Echo & The Bunnymen, OMD, the writing of Bill Drummond and the Mersey poets. Luke and John also discuss how Davies’ sexuality is a narrative thread running through the film, beginning with the eroticism he experienced going to old-school wrestling matches, whether it’d be possible to make a film about Liverpool today and not mention the slave trade, and the views on municipal architecture. Was Davies picking the right targets when he criticised contemporary architecture in our age when the built environment of the UK’s cities is becoming increasingly corporate and homogenised? How does this relate to the idea of belonging to Liverpool, its relationship to London and the likes of Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle and so on? And most importantly, given John watched Of Time And The City with in the house he grew up in with his mum on the sofa, what did she think?