{ "id": "epgz645yan", "slug": "of-time-and-the-city", "title": "Of Time and the City", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form", "label": "Films by genre, form, and subject", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.documentary", "label": "Documentary and biographical films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.documentary" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.documentary.documentary-by-subject-arts-music-place", "label": "Documentary films by subject: arts, music, sports, and place", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.documentary.documentary-by-subject-arts-music-place" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.documentary", "label": "Western Europe · 2001 to 2020: Documentary and biographical films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.documentary", "path": [ { "id": "geo.weu", "label": "Western Europe", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2001", "label": "Western Europe · 2001 to 2020", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2001.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001.culture" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form", "label": "Films by genre, form, and subject", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.documentary", "label": "Documentary and biographical films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.documentary" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Of Time and the City is Terence Davies's 2008 archival documentary about his Liverpool youth, premiered at Cannes, winner of the 2009 New York Film Critics Circle Best Documentary award.", "snippet": "Of Time and the City is Terence Davies's 2008 archival documentary about his Liverpool youth, premiered at Cannes, winner of the 2009 New York Film Critics Circle Best Documentary award.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.genre-form.documentary.documentary-by-subject-arts-music-place", "markdown": "# Of Time and the City\n\n*Of Time and the City* is a 2008 British documentary film directed, written, and narrated by Terence Davies, in which he reflects on his childhood and youth in Liverpool through a collage of archival footage, music, poetry, and personal voice-over. It was his first documentary and his first feature in eight years, and it premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.[1](https://www.frieze.com/article/time-and-city) • [2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/31/of-time-and-the-city)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Director and writer | Terence Davies, who also narrates and served as director of photography[3](https://filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org/projects/of-time-and-the-city) |\n| Year and premiere | 2008; screened at the Cannes Film Festival in an honorary special screening, with no prizes won[1](https://www.frieze.com/article/time-and-city) |\n| Running time | 74 minutes (73 minutes 39 seconds at 25 fps per the spotting list)[4](https://strandreleasing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Of_Time_and_The_City_presskit.pdf) • [5](https://www.oftimeandthecity.com/downloads/OfTimeAndTheCityCDCSSL-1_.pdf) |\n| Subject | Davies's life in Liverpool from birth until he left in 1973, set between 1945 and the present day[4](https://strandreleasing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Of_Time_and_The_City_presskit.pdf) |\n| Producers | Roy Boulter and Solon Papadopoulos for Hurricane Films[4](https://strandreleasing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Of_Time_and_The_City_presskit.pdf) |\n| Awards | New York Film Critics Circle Best Documentary (2009); BAFTA nomination for Best Debut; BIFA nomination for Best Documentary[6](https://www.filmaffinity.com/uk/film577577.html) |\n| Critical reception | 93% on the Tomatometer from 59 reviews; Metascore 81 based on 9 critic reviews[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/of_time_and_the_city) • [8](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/of-time-and-the-city/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nThere is no plot to speak of, and that is the point. The film is a memoir in moving pictures: roughly 85% of it is archive material [21](https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3029831/1/Roberts_Of_Time_Dissonance_%26theCity_2015.pdf), arranged not chronologically but emotionally, mapping Davies's Liverpool from his birth in 1945 until he moved away in 1973 [21](https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3029831/1/Roberts_Of_Time_Dissonance_%26theCity_2015.pdf). The city is introduced with shots of the Overhead Railway that look like a [Fritz Lang](https://www.edgepedia.org/fritz-lang) future city, and a tracking shot filmed from a train gliding into town, an image straight out of the Lumière brothers [22](https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/of-time-and-the-city/). From there the film wanders the twentieth century: families struggling to keep warm in winter, troops leaving for the [Korean War](https://www.edgepedia.org/korean-war), women washing windows, hooded professional wrestlers, radio snippets from *Round the Horne* [23](https://variety.com/2008/film/markets-festivals/of-time-and-the-city-1200522260/) • [10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/northern%20voices/2023/04/01/of-time-and-the-city/).\n\nDavies's voiceover carries everything. It moves between rapture and grievance, quoting T.S. Eliot and A.E. Housman, then puncturing its own lyricism with a dry Scouse joke. He remembers the annual exotic pomegranate in his Christmas stocking with the same weight he gives to mocking the royal wedding as \"The Betty Windsor Show\" [23](https://variety.com/2008/film/markets-festivals/of-time-and-the-city-1200522260/). The hooded wrestlers get a sequence of their own: Davies pairs the spookily beautiful footage with his memories of the sexual feelings those men evoked in him [24](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-time30-2009jan30-story.html).\n\n**The film's most famous montage comes when Peggy Lee's \"The Folks Who Live on the Hill\" plays over footage of the squalid Victorian terraces of the poor giving way to the squalid, 1960s-built brutalist tower blocks of the poor.** The song sentimentalizes the old streets; the images and the narration refuse to. Davies knows the old houses were cold and rat-ridden, and he misses them anyway, and the sequence holds both truths at once: the slum clearances gave people indoor plumbing and took away the streets that made a community. Later, a camera pans back from a woman sweeping her veranda to reveal the decayed block she has been housed in, the archive footage turned into an argument against the planners [22](https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/of-time-and-the-city/).\n\nThe royal sequences are the film's comic high point. The all-color lavishness of [Elizabeth II](https://www.edgepedia.org/elizabeth-ii)'s coronation is pointedly contrasted with monochrome stills of Liverpool's poor, and Davies notes that the Scottish fireman who marked the occasion with a firehose salute was \"taking the piss,\" a line that drew the first rousing cheer of the evening at a London screening [25](http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/13/terence-davies-time-and-the-city).\n\nThe darkest stretch comes late, when Davies turns on the [Catholic Church](https://www.edgepedia.org/catholic-church) that formed him. Footage of processions, of the enormous Catholic cathedral, of children marched through ritual, is paired with narration that grows steadily more furious, culminating in his account of the Church's teachings on homosexuality and the shame they instilled. His sarcastic prayer, \"O Jesu, be thou the light...,\" set against religious pageantry, works because underneath the sarcasm is a child's faith that was never allowed to grow up honestly.\n\nThe film closes on the present-day city. Tracking shots glide over Liverpool's regenerated waterfront, gleaming buildings that could be anywhere from Baltimore to Buenos Aires [10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/northern%20voices/2023/04/01/of-time-and-the-city/), while Davies recites Eliot's *Four Quartets*: \"Home is where one starts from. As we grow older / The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated.\" He ends as an alien in his own land [10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/northern%20voices/2023/04/01/of-time-and-the-city/) • [22](https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/of-time-and-the-city/). Davies has said there is no \"message\" in the film about community or urban life; his reckoning is with himself, then and now, not with the city [22](https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/of-time-and-the-city/).\n\n### Characters\n\nThere are no characters in the usual sense; the only speaking presence is Terence Davies himself, whose narration is the film. Everyone else on screen is an anonymous face from the archive: the poor of Liverpool, the wrestlers, the troops, the woman on her veranda.\n\n### Interpretations and controversies\n\nThe film's anti-royal and anti-Church barbs drew attention but little real controversy. The more debated question is what the film is about: critics read it as a hymn to Liverpool and a critique of its development [26](http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/4551), while Davies himself insisted it is not about the city at all but about his own transformation [22](https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/of-time-and-the-city/). Scholars have described it as a melancholic meditation on absence in which the city can only exist in and as an archive [21](https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3029831/1/Roberts_Of_Time_Dissonance_%26theCity_2015.pdf).\n\n## Origin and commission\n\nThe film was commissioned as part of Liverpool's celebrations as [European Capital of Culture](https://www.edgepedia.org/european-capital-of-culture) in 2008. Davies, ahead of the Liverpool premiere at the Philharmonic Hall, called it \"the most important one, because this is where I come from.\"[9](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/13/terence-davies-time-and-the-city) Funding came from a group of public bodies, including Liverpool's Digital Departures project, Northwest Vision and Media, the UK Film Council, the Liverpool Culture Company, and BBC Films.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/31/of-time-and-the-city) • [10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/northern%20voices/2023/04/01/of-time-and-the-city/) It followed an eight-year period in which Davies, whose previous feature was *The House of Mirth*, could not get a film made in the United Kingdom.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/31/of-time-and-the-city) • [11](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/time-city-revisiting-terence-daviess-archival-hymn-liverpool)\n\n## Form and content\n\nThe film relies almost entirely on archival and newsreel footage of twentieth-century Liverpool, woven together by Davies's narration. He described his method as cutting it \"as if it were fiction,\" with \"images which speak\" and a layered soundtrack of popular and classical music, voices, and radio clips.[4](https://strandreleasing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Of_Time_and_The_City_presskit.pdf) The narration mixes personal recollection with quotations from literature and philosophy, including A.E. Housman's *[A Shropshire Lad](https://www.edgepedia.org/a-shropshire-lad)* and Shelley's \"Ozymandias,\" both read over the opening footage of the city's now-demolished Overhead Railway.[5](https://www.oftimeandthecity.com/downloads/OfTimeAndTheCityCDCSSL-1_.pdf) The music ranges from Handel and Mahler to [Peggy Lee](https://www.edgepedia.org/peggy-lee).[12](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/of-time-and-the-city-12a-981417.html)\n\n**Themes.** Davies confronts the two forces he calls the determinants of his youth, Catholicism and homosexuality, before broadening to attack the monarchy, mock the Beatles, and lament the demolition of terraced neighborhoods and their replacement with high-rise blocks.[12](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/of-time-and-the-city-12a-981417.html) • [4](https://strandreleasing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Of_Time_and_The_City_presskit.pdf) He describes himself as having moved from a Catholic upbringing to becoming a \"born-again atheist,\" and he explains in the film that he came to classical music, including Bruckner, just as the Beatles rose to prominence, so their impact on the city is deliberately understated.[13](https://www.timeout.com/movies/of-time-and-the-city) • [14](https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/cannes-2008-review-of-time-and-the-city/) Specific reminiscences include the 1955 [Grand National](https://www.edgepedia.org/grand-national), at which his mother backed the winner Quare Times each way, the Lyceum tea-rooms, and newsreel of the King's Liverpool Regiment embarking for Korea in 1952.[12](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/of-time-and-the-city-12a-981417.html) • [15](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/nov/02/documentary)\n\nThe film's structure is chronological and associative rather than argumentative: it moves from the wartime and postwar city, through the austerity years and the arrival of television and popular music, to slum clearance and the skyline of the present.[4](https://strandreleasing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Of_Time_and_The_City_presskit.pdf) Matthew Gandy, Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at [King's College, Cambridge](https://www.edgepedia.org/kings-college-cambridge), writing in the BFI DVD booklet, described the film as a response to the failures of postwar Britain and an exploration of the connections between memory and place.[10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/northern%20voices/2023/04/01/of-time-and-the-city/)\n\n## Reception\n\nCritical response was strongly positive. The film holds 93% on the Tomatometer from 59 reviews and a Metascore of 81, which Metacritic labels \"universal acclaim.\"[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/of_time_and_the_city) • [8](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/of-time-and-the-city/) Peter Bradshaw in *The Guardian* called it \"miraculous\" and compared its spirit to Humphrey Jennings's *Listen to Britain* and to [Noël Coward](https://www.edgepedia.org/noel-coward).[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/31/of-time-and-the-city) Anthony Quinn in *The Independent* placed it, alongside [Guy Maddin](https://www.edgepedia.org/guy-maddin)'s *My Winnipeg*, as \"a milestone in autobiographical cinema.\"[12](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/of-time-and-the-city-12a-981417.html) Time Out gave it five stars, calling it \"a poetic, sometimes caustic, always enthralling cocktail of Mahler and Peggy Lee, TS Eliot and James Joyce, archive film and witty narration.\"[13](https://www.timeout.com/movies/of-time-and-the-city) Dissenting voices existed: J. Hoberman in *The Village Voice* found the return to Davies's youth mixed in effect, scoring it 50 on Metacritic.[8](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/of-time-and-the-city/)\n\nAudience measures were lower than critics' scores: the Popcornmeter stood at 68% from more than 1,000 ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, the Metacritic user score was 6.5 from 11 ratings, and IMDb users gave 7.2/10 from about 2,400 votes.[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/of_time_and_the_city) • [8](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/of-time-and-the-city/) • [16](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232790/ratings/)\n\n## Awards and afterlife\n\nThe film won Best Documentary from the New York Film Critics Circle in 2009 and received nominations for the BAFTA for Best Debut (for producers Sol Papadopoulos and Roy Boulter) and the British Independent Film Award for Best Documentary.[6](https://www.filmaffinity.com/uk/film577577.html) It also received two Cinema Eye Honors nominations and a win and a nomination at the Thessaloniki Film Festival.[8](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/of-time-and-the-city/)\n\nThe film has remained in circulation. The [British Film Institute](https://www.edgepedia.org/british-film-institute) preserved a print in the BFI National Archive, and the BFI re-released it in UK cinemas in 2025, with the [British Board of Film Classification](https://www.edgepedia.org/british-board-of-film-classification) certifying a 76-minute version on 21 July 2025.[11](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/time-city-revisiting-terence-daviess-archival-hymn-liverpool) • [17](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/of-time-and-the-city-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc00mtuymji) FACT Liverpool scheduled a 35mm screening in December 2025 as part of a monthly series of archive-print presentations.[18](https://www.fact.co.uk/film/of-time-and-the-city-35mm) Davies died in 2023 at the age of 77; *Of Time and the City* remained his only feature documentary.[19](https://apnews.com/article/d1c6cf1d5ac495ec7af2015b08b6e043) • [20](https://movingimage.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/pressrelease-terence-davies_20250807.pdf)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Of Time and the City, Frieze interview with Terence Davies by Daniel Tapper (31 October 2008)](https://www.frieze.com/article/time-and-city)\n2. [Peter Bradshaw, review of Of Time and the City, The Guardian (31 October 2008)](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/31/of-time-and-the-city)\n3. [Of Time And The City, British Council UK Films Database](https://filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org/projects/of-time-and-the-city)\n4. [Of Time and The City press kit, Strand Releasing](https://strandreleasing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Of_Time_and_The_City_presskit.pdf)\n5. [Of Time and the City Combined Dialogue, Continuity and Subtitle Spotting List (9 September 2008)](https://www.oftimeandthecity.com/downloads/OfTimeAndTheCityCDCSSL-1_.pdf)\n6. [Of Time and the City (2008), FilmAffinity, awards listing](https://www.filmaffinity.com/uk/film577577.html)\n7. [Of Time and the City, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/of_time_and_the_city)\n8. [Of Time and the City Reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/of-time-and-the-city/)\n9. [Scott Anthony, Terence Davies' thoughtful, eccentric hymn to Liverpool, The Guardian (13 October 2008)](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/13/terence-davies-time-and-the-city)\n10. [Matthew Gandy, Of Time and the City DVD booklet essay, BFI Southbank Programme Notes](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/northern%20voices/2023/04/01/of-time-and-the-city/)\n11. [Kieron Corless, Of Time and the City: revisiting Terence Davies's archival hymn to Liverpool, BFI (9 October 2023)](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/time-city-revisiting-terence-daviess-archival-hymn-liverpool)\n12. [Anthony Quinn, Of Time and the City (12A), The Independent (31 October 2008)](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/of-time-and-the-city-12a-981417.html)\n13. [Dave Calhoun, Of Time and the City review, Time Out (19 May 2008)](https://www.timeout.com/movies/of-time-and-the-city)\n14. [Joe Utichi, Cannes 2008: Review – Of Time and the City, Rotten Tomatoes editorial (20 May 2008)](https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/cannes-2008-review-of-time-and-the-city/)\n15. [Of Time and the City, documentary films, The Guardian (2 November 2008)](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/nov/02/documentary)\n16. [Of Time and the City (2008) Ratings, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232790/ratings/)\n17. [Of Time And The City, British Board of Film Classification](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/of-time-and-the-city-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc00mtuymji)\n18. [Of Time and The City (35mm), FACT Liverpool](https://www.fact.co.uk/film/of-time-and-the-city-35mm)\n19. [Terence Davies, filmmaker of the lyrical 'Distant Voices, Still Lives,' dies at the age of 77, AP News](https://apnews.com/article/d1c6cf1d5ac495ec7af2015b08b6e043)\n20. [Terence Davies: Time and the City press release, Museum of the Moving Image (2025)](https://movingimage.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/pressrelease-terence-davies_20250807.pdf)\n21. [https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3029831/1/Roberts_Of_Time_Dissonance_%26theCity_2015.pdf](https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3029831/1/Roberts_Of_Time_Dissonance_%26theCity_2015.pdf)\n22. [https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/of-time-and-the-city/](https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/of-time-and-the-city/)\n23. [https://variety.com/2008/film/markets-festivals/of-time-and-the-city-1200522260/](https://variety.com/2008/film/markets-festivals/of-time-and-the-city-1200522260/)\n24. [https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-time30-2009jan30-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-time30-2009jan30-story.html)\n25. [http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/13/terence-davies-time-and-the-city](http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/oct/13/terence-davies-time-and-the-city)\n26. [http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/4551](http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/4551)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Documentary and biographical films › Documentary films by subject: arts, music, sports, and place*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/of-time-and-the-city", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/of-time-and-the-city.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Of Time and the City\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/of-time-and-the-city. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Of Time and the City](https://www.edgepedia.org/of-time-and-the-city)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/of-time-and-the-city](https://www.edgepedia.org/of-time-and-the-city). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Of Time and the City\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/of-time-and-the-city. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Of Time and the City is Terence Davies's 2008 archival documentary about his Liverpool youth, premiered at Cannes, winner of the 2009 New York Film Critics Circle Best Documentary award." }