Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on BFI Player Classics

Watch this video and more on BFI Player Classics

Watch free Learn more

Already registered? Sign in

Distant Voices, Still Lives

PG-13 rating icon
Drama • Classics, Drama, PG-13, 01-Jan-1988

Set in a world before Elvis, a Liverpool before the Beatles, Terence Davies' debut feature is a remarkable evocation of working-class family life in the 40s and 50s and a visionary exploration of memory. In a powerful succession of searing vignettes, Davies paints an autobiographical picture of a family dominated by an oppressive patriarch.

Tags
Autobiographies, 1940s, 1950s, Nostalgia
Cast
Freda Dowie Mrs Davies, the mother
Peter Postlethwaite Tommy Davies, the father
Angela Walsh Eileen
Crew
Terence Davies director

Up Next in Drama

  • The Crane
    15:51
    The Crane

    The Crane

    An extremely fresh-faced Jude Law makes his film debut in this unusual short as a man who loses his job, his home and his fiancée, all in the space of one day.

  • Jew Süss
    1:43:49
    Jew Süss

    Jew Süss

    Unlike the horrifically antisemitic 1940 Nazi propaganda film, Lothar Mendes’ adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger’s book offers a fairly sympathetic depiction of a Jewish man (Conrad Veidt) who seeks political power in order to improve the plight of Germany’s Jewry. Despite some unpleasant stereotype...

  • Le Mépris
    1:43:08
    Le Mépris

    Le Mépris

    Based on Moravia’s novel, Jean-Luc Godard’s sardonic look at the world of filmmaking boasts superb performances by Michel Piccoli as a compromised writer, Brigitte Bardot as his bored wife, Jack Palance as a manipulative producer and Fritz Lang as himself, about to film Homer’s Odyssey in Cinecit...

×