A key work of the New British Cinema of the 1960s, Billy Liar is the second film of John Schlesinger and his first teaming with Julie Christie.
Grade: B+
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original film poster
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The gifted director and star would work again two years later, on “Darling,” which would be nominated for Best Picture and would garner Christie her first and only Oscar Award.
Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) is known to his blue-collar mates as Billy Liar because of his unusually vivid imagination. To escape his dreary life as an undertaker assistant in a northern English town, Billy creates a mythical kingdom, Ambrosia.
When reality proves to be too complicated, Billy is off to Ambrosia, where he can be whatever he wishes to be, far away from his dead-end job and complicated love life, which is define by engagement to two women and real love for a third one. In one of her first film roles, Julie Christie plays one of two “real” girls who wish that Billy would come down to earth.
Social Class and Mobility
The last, grim scene is particularly poignant in its commentary.
Billy agrees to meet Liz at then train station, and the couple board the train, but at the last minute, Billy disembarks, lying that he needs to buy milk for their journey. By the time he gets back, the train pulls out, with Liz at the window and his suitcase left behind on the platform.
Billy walks the dark deserted road back to his home, imagining himself leading the marching army of Ambrosia. As Billy’s bedroom lights upstairs turn on, the camera pans away from the house, with the national anthem of Ambrosia playing.
While director John Schlesinger came from an educated Hampstead family, Waterhouse was a dropout from Osmondthorpe Council School in Leeds, and star Tom Courtenay the son of Hull dockworker. This might have given hopes for a more diverse British film industry, open to working-class actors, writers, and directors.
This black-and-white version of the Keith Waterhouse-Willis Hall stage play “visualizes” some of Billy’s more outrageous fabrications.
Schlesinger captures well Billy’s periodical escapes of the drudgery of his job at a funeral parlor and his conjuring up impossible adventures and conquest of desirable women.
Following his stunning work in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Tom Courtenay gives another compelling performance in a demanding role that established him as one of the most prominent actors of his generations, alongside with Albert Finney and Alan bates.
Reteaming:
Juie Christie and Tom Courtenay would reunite two years later in David Lean’s romantic epic, Doctor Zhivago.
Recycling:
The text of “Billy Liar” was later transformed into a stage musical and a British TV series.
Cast
Tom Courtenay as William Terrence Fisher
Wilfred Pickles as Geoffrey Fisher
Mona Washbourne as Alice Fisher
Ethel Griffies as Florence, Billy’s grandmother
Finlay Currie as Duxbury
Gwendolyn Watts as Rita
Helen Fraser as Barbara
Julie Christie as Liz
Leonard Rossiter as Emanuel Shadrack
Rodney Bewes as Arthur Crabtree
George Innes as Stamp
Leslie Randall as Danny Boon
Patrick Barr as Inspector MacDonald
Ernest Clark as Prison governor
Credits:
Directed by John Schlesinger
Screenplay by Keith Waterhouse, Willis Hall, based on 1959 novel by Waterhouse and 1960 play by Waterhouse and Hall
Produced by Joseph Janni
Cinematography Denys Coop
Edited by Roger Cherrill
Music by Richard Rodney Bennett
Production companies: Vic Films Productions; Waterhall Productions
Distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors
Warner-Pathé
Release dates: August 15, 1963 (London)
Running time: 98 million
Budget: $1 million or £236,809
Box office £22,173 (USA
