Directed by Terence Davies. With Robin Hooper, Nick Stringer,
Valerie Lilley
UK 1984, 35mm, b/w, 94 min
Davies’ first films were a series of three narrative shorts that collectively construct a portrait of fictional alter ego Robert Tucker, who like Davies is the product of an impoverished Liverpool Catholic family. The semi-autobiographical first two films, Children and Madonna and Child, introduce the concerns that will also inform Davies’ first two features: a childhood shadowed by bullying and an abusive father, the father’s death, and the struggle to accept and assume one’s homosexuality. The remarkable third short, Death and Transfiguration imagines Tucker’s waning days in a geriatric ward, where the night nurse’s flashlight becomes heaven-sent illumination.