Figure 1.--This is an image of Bud (Leigh McCormack) from "The Long Day Closes"." A lot of the scenes are set at home. Bud lives in a poor working class terraced house.
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Figure 1.--This is an image of Bud (Leigh McCormack) from "The Long Day Closes"." A lot of the scenes are set at home. Bud lives in a poor working class terraced house. |
A British reader has mentioned this film to us. I know very little about it, except for a few available scenes. The film deals with a young boy's obsession with the movies. There are several school scenes. The film is set in Liverpool, apparently in the early 1950s. Hopefully our British readers who have seen this film will provide more information.
"The Long Day Closes" is the British equivalent of an 'art-house' movie. It was released in 1992, directed by Terence Davies, and was shown in many art cinemas but not really on general release in the major theaters.
The film is set in Liverpool during the late 1950s.
The main character is Bud, a boy played with great depth by Leigh McCormack. It was his only film. He appears to be 11 years old.
"The Long Day Closes" is the story of a boy nammed Bud (Leigh McCormack).
Bud comes from an Irish Catholic background, and religious imagery runs throughout the film. It is far more an atmospheric than narrative piece. There is little in the way of dialogue and much more is acheived by what is not said than what is. A lot of the scenes are either set at home (a poor working class terraced house) or at school. Bud has clearly graduated to a higher education but it is not stipulated whether or not this is a Grammar School. Bud is always shown to be extremely sensitive and apparently intelligent, yet nearly all the
other boys are thugs and bullies, who usually pick on him. This really forms the centrepiece of the film. Bud is part of a very close and loving family and he is extremely close to his mother. As the film progresses, Bud's best friend draws away from him and finds new friends. Bud is inconsolable. It is subtle, but there is a definite indication that Bud is gay. One of the best sequences from the film is when Bud is left alone by himself and is swinging on a pole leading down to the cellar of the house whilst 'Tammy' by Debbie Reynolds plays, then the shot moves to overhead images of discipline in the classroom and discipline in the church, which is also overlaid with sound and pictures from the cinema - Bud's major passion.
The clothing of the film is technically quite accurate and does capture the time and place well. No one dresses in bright colours. Everything is dark or pastel. Bud is rarely seen in anything except his school uniform of grey kneesocks, grey shorts, grey shirt and grey sleeveless pullover. Sometimes he wears a short pants suit. All the other boys in the film, some as old as 14 or so, also wear short pants but none of them are dressed as smartly as Bud, perhaps indicating their lack of care in their appearence. Their socks are round
their ankles, their clothing often with holes in or patches. None of their clothing seems to match. Bud seems very much the middle-class boy thrown into a working class environment, in spite of being born into it himself.
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