The Neon Bible **** (1995, Jacob Tierney, Gena Rowlands, Diana Scarwid, Denis Leary, Frances Conroy) – Classic Movie Review 2,875

Terence Davies’s 1995 British drama film The Neon Bible tells the enchanting story of a 15-year-old boy, David (Jacob Tierney), growing up in Georgia in the Forties, whose life is troubled by his over-bearing parents and his Bible-led environment. 

Writer-director Terence Davies’s 1995 British coming of age drama film The Neon Bible tells the enchanting story of a 15-year-old boy, David (Jacob Tierney), growing up in the American Deep South of the Forties, whose life is troubled by his over-bearing parents and his Bible-led environment.

David’s abusive father Frank (Denis Leary) enlists in the US Army in World War Two and disappears, leaving David to take care of his mother Sarah (Diana Scarwid) with his Aunt Mae (Gena Rowlands).

The sad-eyed Tierney is smashing, though he is upstaged by wonderful Gena Rowlands as his flamboyant and risqué singer aunt Mae Morgan, who has a lasting effect on his life.

‘If you were different from anybody else in town,’ David recalls, ‘you had to get out. They used to say in school, “you have to think for yourself,” but you couldn’t do that in town. You have to think what your father thought and that was what everybody thought.’

This most moving, beautifully made, if harrowing film is a great credit to British writer-director Davies, off his usual territory, basing his screenplay on the novel by John Kennedy Toole. It works both as a vivid and haunting portrait in flashback of a misfit boy’s life in a rural Forties Georgia town and a surprisingly mature reflection on that life while the boy is heading along on a train.

Also in the cast are Diana Scarwid, Denis Leary, Lee Burmester, Frances Conroy, Peter McRobbie, Joan Glover, Bob Hannah, Tom Turbiville and Drake Bell as David aged 10.

With a nostalgic glow, it is a lovely, gorgeous looking film. Mick Coulter’s Eastmancolor cinematography is outstanding, filming in Atlanta, Crawfordville, and Madison, Georgia.

Terence Davies recalled: ‘The only thing I can say is that it’s a transition work. And I couldn’t have done The House of Mirth (2000) without it.’ That’s fine, but it was a mistake for him to want to say ‘The Neon Bible doesn’t work, and that’s entirely my fault.’

The cast are Jacob Tierney as David aged 15, Drake Bell as David aged 10, Gena Rowlands as Mae Morgan, Diana Scarwid as Sarah, Denis Leary as Frank, Bob Hannah as George, Aaron Frisch as Bruce, Charles Franzen as Tannoy Voice, Leo Burmester as Bobbie Lee Taylor, Frances Conroy as Miss Scover, Peter McRobbie as Reverend Watkins, Joan Glover as Flora, Tom Turbiville as Clyde, Sharon Blackwood as Schoolmistress, and Ian Shearer as Billy Sunday Thompson.

Terence Davies (10 November 1945 – 7 October 2023).

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,875

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