Davies’ first film after his early autobiographical works is a coming-of-age story, alternately reverie and nightmare, about a boy in the Southern US who chafes at the confining strictures of convention yet learns painful lessons about the cost of resistance, as do his mother and aunt. The mixed reception given the film may result in part from its somewhat airless, studio-bound feel, but the sense of staginess results from Davies’ experimentation with what has been called his “memory-realism.” In other words, the film takes us on a tour of Depression-era America via classical Hollywood, Walker Evans and Edward Hopper. Realist narrative episodes give way to rhapsodic passages wherein the passage of time or the internal state of a character are expressed purely cinematically: through lighting, camera movement, dissolves and music. (One unforgettable passage involves a sheet on a clothesline, a flag-draped coffin and the overture to Gone With the Wind.) Ultimately, The Neon Bible may be best understood as a transitional work, combining elements from Davies’ first films—such as the episodic structure brought to crisis by a violent father, seen from the perspective of his young son—with the concerns of his later films, more attuned to female suffering.