Originally made as separate films, two years apart, Terence Davies’ musical soap delicately captures the “poetry of the ordinary”. Piecing together the life of a working-class Catholic family in 1940s Liverpool, William Diver and Patrick Duval’s fusty photography conjures up the bleak austerity and reinforces the hushed hesitancy of a household never sure of father Pete Postlethwaite’s mood.
The soundtrack also shifts between melancholy and optimism. But while the restless perspective can seem self-conscious, the action is so rooted in a precise time and place that it always feels like authentic autobiography rather than anything more archly artistic. A gem.