Terence Davies, a British screenwriter and director known for films such as Distant Voices, and Still Lives, has passed away at the age of 77.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, his trilogy of autobiographical films titled Children, Madonna, And Child, Death, And Transfiguration put Terence Davies on the filmmaking map, and he created nine more features.
Most recently, Slow Horses star Jack Lowden and Doctor Who’s Peter Capaldi starred in his Netflix drama Benediction, which was based on the life of English poet Siegfried Sassoon and featured the late actor Julian Sands.
Manager John Taylor released the following statement to the PA news agency: “I am deeply saddened to announce the passing of Terence Davies, who passed away peacefully at home in his sleep on Saturday, October 7, 2023, following a brief illness.”
Horace’s Latin phrase “Umbra Sumus” and an excerpt from Christina Rossetti’s poem When I Am Dead, My Dearest, both of which had significance to Davies, were added to the statement.
Born in Liverpool, Terence Davies worked as a cargo office assistant and an accountant’s bookkeeper for ten years before enrolling in the Coventry Drama School in 1973.
In 1988, the director was awarded the Cannes International Critics Prize for his film Distant Voices, Still Lives, based on his family’s memories of working-class existence in the 1940s and 1950s, in Liverpool.
Gillian Anderson, who portrayed socialite Lily Bart in Davies’ 2000 rendition of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, is one of the many well-known actors who have appeared in his films.
In Davies’ 2011 adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play The Deep Blue Sea, about forbidden love and the dread of solitude, Rachel Weisz portrayed Hester Collyer.
After World War I, British model and actress Agyness Deyn portrayed Chris Guthrie in his 2015 adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song, which followed her voyage from schoolgirl to womanhood and maternity to widowhood.
And in 2016, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and the City portrayed the 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion, written and directed by Terence Davies.
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