Took a while to work this out, looking at it all angles, before I realised that to form this outstanding image of Liverpool Terence Davies has superimposed a present-day city centre skyline onto Bernard Fallon's 1969 photograph The long walk. What then struck me was how it hadn't seemed unlikely to see such a picture of dereliction foregrounded before the gleaming spectacle of the iconic buildings of Empire and the new city towers of last-gasp land-grab capitalism.
Parts of Kirkdale, I thought, will still look like this, because as Fallon put it, 'The area was literally flattened as the city had demolished many homes and removed the residents miles away to new estates in Kirkby, Skelmersdale and Speke.' Quoting a well-used saying of the people of Scotland Road, 'What the Luftwaffe failed to do, the city corporation finished off'... well not quite finished off, the work continues today.
I can't wait to see the film which has had so many great reviews (this, for example) and is now on general release. More on this, Sunday.
john davies
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