Softwing
Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??
Helloturia
I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.
Haven Kaycee
It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
James Hitchcock
This was the second feature film to be directed by John Schlesinger; his first had been "A Kind of Loving". Both films are adaptations of novels and both belong to the social-realist "kitchen sink drama" movement which was very influential in the British cinema of the late fifties and sixties. There is, however, a difference between the two films. " A Kind of Loving" was a serious drama whereas "Billy Liar", like the Keith Waterhouse novel on which it is based, is essentially a comedy. Heroes of "kitchen sink" dramas were often, as here, young man from a humble background but with aspirations towards a better life; it was this idea of which provided John Braine with the title of his best-known novel, "Room at the Top", also made into a film. Waterhouse, however, was using his anti-hero Billy Fisher to satirise not only the limitations of provincial life but also the conventions of "kitchen sink" fiction and drama.The film generally follows the plot of the book- Waterhouse acted as scriptwriter, along with his friend Willis Hall- but there are a couple of differences. The film, for example, omits the newspaper columnist "Man o' the Dales". On the other hand the comedian Danny Boon, who is referred to in the novel but is never actually seen, makes an appearance here when he comes to open a supermarket.The action takes place over the course of a single day in the Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton. (In the novel Stradhoughton was a fictional place, here it is clearly based upon Bradford). Billy is a young man of 19 living with his parents, with whom he does not get on. His father Geoffrey is a comic take on the stock figure of the Yorkshire paterfamilias, a stern, irascible self-made businessman from working-class stock who has risen in the world and regards his son as a severe disappointment. Billy's mother is an equally stereotypical housewife, sharp-tongued and limited in outlook. (The height of her ambitions seems to be having a request read out on the popular radio programme "Housewives' Choice"). His only other living relative is his half-mad old grandmother, who lives with the family. He finds his dead-end job as a clerk with the undertakers firm of Shadrack & Duxbury dull and unfulfilling. He feels himself trapped and frustrated by provincial life and cherishes the dream of escaping to London where he hopes to find work as a comedy writer (a dream which is based upon very shaky foundations).At the beginning of the film we have some sympathy with Billy's predicament. He is clearly a young man of some intelligence and has a way with words which enables him to express his frustrations in some witty and sardonic language. As the story progresses, however, we find ourselves sympathising with Billy less and less. His nickname "Billy Liar" is a well-deserved one, because he finds it difficult to differentiate between truth and fantasy. He spends a lot of the time escaping into a fantasy world in which he is the dictator of the invented country of Ambrosia (named after a brand of tinned rice pudding). Worse than this sort of daydreaming is his compulsive lying. Some of his falsehoods are told to try and avoid the consequences of minor misdemeanours and others to try and cover up previous lies, but most are told for no reason whatsoever, including his tale that his father was a naval officer in the war or his attempt to pass off his girlfriend Barbara as his sister. He is also capable of petty dishonesty; tasked at work with mailing advertising calendars to potential customers, he embezzles the postage money and hides the calendars under his bed.Billy's love-life is a complicated one. He has three girlfriends- the sweet-natured but naive and strait-laced Barbara, the hard, brassy and fiery-tempered Rita and the more sympathetic Liz, about the only person who comes close to understanding his strange personality. Billy, of course, tells lies to his girlfriends, generally with the intention of preventing each of them from finding out about the other two and to cover up the fact that, although he has managed to become engaged to all of them, he only has one ring. (Liz is more attractive in the film than I imagined her in the book; if Billy had been able to pull a girl with the looks of Julie Christie I doubt if he would have bothered with the likes of Barbara and Rita).There are good performances from Mona Washbourne and Wilfred Pickles as Billy's parents, Leonard Rossiter as his boss Mr Shadrack and Helen Fraser as the hapless Barbara. Christie, however, does not make as big an impression here as she was to do in some later Schlesinger films such as "Darling" and "Far from the Madding Crowd".Tom Courtenay gives a nicely judged performance as Billy, avoiding the twin traps of making him too unpleasant (in which case the film would have become virtually unwatchable) and of making him too sympathetic, in which case the whole point of the book would have been lost. Everyone loves a kidder, but nobody lends him money, and Billy is not the sort of person anyone would really want as a friend, family member, employee, workmate or lover. Waterhouse's anti-hero represents a comic, satirical take on the "poor-boy-made-good" aspirational heroes of the kitchen sink genre. By the end of the film we realise that Billy will never make good. He will never even amount to a poor-boy-made-bad like Michael Caine's character in "Get Carter". There may be no room at the top for the Billy Fishers of this world, but there is plenty of room at the bottom. 8/10
chuck-reilly
Although Tom Courtenay is the star of "Billy Liar" and gives an outstanding performance as this British version of a "Walter Mitty-like" character, it's a very young Julie Christie who steals the show. Her part isn't large and her on-screen time is limited, but Christie's free-spirited carefree role changes the dynamics of the film and challenges Courtenay's Billy Fisher to do something with his life besides living in a complex fantasy world of his own making. Fisher is mainly concerned with his standing in Ambrosia, a make-believe European country where he resides as military hero, dictator and all-around super human being. He's forever leading the parade in this imaginative world as his real life passes him by. In reality, Fisher lives in a drab northern English city and employed as an undertaker's assistant. He's a notorious and habitual liar and under-achieving in every facet of his existence---except one. He has more than one fiancée and is constantly juggling his lies to keep them at arm's distance. In the hands of a less capable director, Fisher's "problems" wouldn't elicit anything more than a yawn and a cheap laugh. But the great John Schlesinger is able to present Billy's story with a bundle of humor tinged with a whiff of sympathy. He's really a lost soul but doesn't know it yet. The ambivalent ending can be taken two different ways depending on the viewer's opinion. The final scene where Christie leaves alone on the train to London stays with you long after the final reel is over."Billy Liar" was Tom Courtenay's second major success after "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" was released the previous year. He followed this role with a lead part in David Lean's epic "Doctor Zhivago." He's kept himself busy with stage and screen work to this day and he's now "Sir" Thomas Courtenay. For Julie Christie, all the doors opened up for her after "Billy" and she continued on to international success. Her next film, also with Schlesinger directing, was "Darling" for which she took home the Academy Award for Best Actress. But seeing her in this first major role is certainly a treat. It's easy to see why she became one of screen's all-time leading ladies. Actress debuts don't come any better than Julie Christie's in "Billy Liar." John Schlesinger's career took off after "Billy Liar" and "Darling." He's probably best remembered now for directing Dustin Hoffmann and Lawrence Olivier in the thriller "Marathon Man."
LCShackley
From the opening montage of British homes, filmed with a fish-eye lens from a moving vehicle, where all the housewives inside are listening to their favorite songs on the radio, you know you're in for something quirky and fun. The first few scenes of Billy's home life, setting him up as a young Walter Mitty-type daydreamer, add to the slightly manic mood. Billy, we learn, is a lovable liar, not really trying to harm anyone, but causing trouble for his family, his employers, and especially for the two girls who think they are engaged to him (one a pure, devoted "girl next door" and the other a worldly-wise waitress).Billy has dreams of being a script writer for a famous comedian, and has almost everyone, including himself, convinced that he's on the verge of success. He's surrounded by people who don't understand him, except for one: Liz (a glowing young Julie Christie), who like him is a free spirit, flitting in and out of the boring routine of Billy's home town. She encourages him to follow his muse. But will Billy dare to take the step to make his dreams come true?A near-perfect script is brought to life by a cast of real characters, under the sure direction of John Schlesinger in glorious black and white. Tom Courtenay delivers a tour-de-force performance that you won't soon forget. A delightful film that's much more than just a comedy.
Robert J. Maxwell
When "Billy Liar" reached the screen in 1963 it was considered a little shocking, an innovative contribution to the British ashcan school of cinema, along with "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "Morgan", and a few others. The setting was always grimy and urban. The characters always working class. The conflicts were small and trivial to an outsider, and the treatment veered from comic to dramatic and back again, so that the audience was never quite certain about what was to come next or -- far more important -- how to feel about what they were watching. The characters were multi-dimensional, as characters are in life off the screen, and that's a compliment to the audience. People generally are not good or bad; they are good AND bad. Adults can make up their own minds about their responses, can't they? This is a good example of the genre. Tom Courtenay is Billy Fisher. He works in an undertaker's establishment in some minor role -- mailing out annual calendars and so forth. He's juggling two women as well. One blond bimbo satisfies his physical needs while the virginal brunette offers him a future in which, with any luck, the wedded couple will live in a shabby flat in the same smoky industrial city and raise a couple of children who will grow up to be as unexceptional as they themselves are. The brunette wanders happily through a cemetery visualizing what THEIR plot will look like. This legerdemain confuses Courtenay, who doesn't care about his job anyway, and he begins to get into some mostly amusing hot water at work.And so -- keeping two young women on the hook and in danger of being fired and not being particularly appreciated by his Mom and Dad at home -- Billy Fisher does what any sane person would do. He fantasizes. And we see clips of his fantasies unfold on screen.Probably this was the most original feature of the movie -- the fantasies. There were no shimmering dissolves, no harp arpeggios, to let us know they were coming. Dad insults Billy and -- WHAM -- a cut to Billy firing machine-gun bullets into Dad. None are particularly amusing -- this isn't Walter Mitty -- but they're all kind of shocking. Of course, that kind of editing has been imitated a thousand times since then and we've grown accustomed to it, but it was imaginatively done by director Schlesinger, a genuine innovation. More extended fantasies show us Courtenay as dictator of his own nation -- Ambrosia.Later in the film we get to know Julie Christie's character. She's a knockout, she sees through Billy's lies, and she wants to run away to London with him. At the last minute, when the couple are already seated on the train, Courtenay makes an excuse to leave for a moment and deliberately misses the train. The last we see of Julie Christie she is looking out the window of the departing coach in Courtenay's direction, her head cocked, smiling slightly, as if she'd expected him to abort the escape all along.It's sad, in the end, despite the comic interludes. This is a story in which the system embodies a lifelong inertia, and the system wins. Courtenay will wind up with some wife who is full of bourgeois impulses, but then he was never very creative himself -- except for his daydreams.
