While the English filmmaker Terence Davies has completed only a handful of films over the past quarter century, he has established himself as a modern master of mise-en-scene with a flawless ability to render an indelible sense of the past. As the late critic David Overbey has noted, "Terence Davies is one of that rare breed of filmmakers who can turn their own memories of pain and joy into art, illuminating our own lives, freeing us from fear, and opening our hearts to possibilities of happiness." Davies’s best-known works recast elements from his own imperfect past growing up in a working-class family in Liverpool. Yet through an impeccable visual style and an ingenious use of music, he transforms that world into a place of timeless beauty and charm. Since the mid-1990s, Davies has moved away from autobiography and turned instead to vivid screen adaptations of literary family dramas, including his brilliant new realization of Edith Wharton’s classic novel The House of Mirth.