BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

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

jc-osms "Billy Liar" unlike other British kitchen-sink dramas of the period, uses black humour and fantasy to put across its themes of thwarted ambition, the generation gap and revolt against conformity, with Tom Courteney, in the title role, superbly personifying if not teenage rebellion at least some sort of youthful angst as he strains to escape the confines of his stodgy, niggling, family, his literally dead-end job and last but not least his lack of a love-life.The device of Billy's "daydream-believing" of course dates back to James Thurber's Walter Mitty, only transplanted to the grim north of Britain with our (anti)-hero retreating to his make-believe world of Ambrosia where he fulfils every head of state and army chief position to boot. The contrast with his day-job of being a clerk in a funeral director's business is obvious leading him to contemplate a migration to London egged on by the free-spirited Julie Christie, as natural and pretty here as she ever was, leading to the brilliant anti-climax of the inverted "Brief Encounter" ending.John Schlesinger's direction rises to the imaginative requirements of Billy's thought-processes, but equally knows when to employ quirkiness (the episode of the missing calendars) pathos, notably at the final scene and also during the scenes when Billy's bickering grandmother unexpectedly dies and of course humour. The cast is excellent, in particular Rodney Bewes readying his future "Likely Lad" persona as Billy's mate at the undertaker's and Leonard Rossiter, perhaps underused as Billy's phlegmatic, pedantic boss. But it's Courteney who essentially steals the show making it easy for us to identify with his character as we get inside his head and relate to his worm's eye view of the world only to share his final defeat as he retreats from his dream of escape to familial duty abandoning Julie Christie (whose knowing expression on the train as she in fact leaves him behind is superbly conveyed).Silly Billy, if you ask me.

tavm For a long time, I've been curious about seeing this British comedy/drama starring Tom Courtenay and, in one of her earliest roles, Julie Christie since I read that a short-lived TV series starring Steve Guttenberg called "Billy" from the late '70s was loosely based on this. In this movie, directed by John Schlesinger, Courtenay is Billy Fisher who has an overactive imagination whenever things bother him which seems to be nearly all the time what with the demands he gets from his parents and grandmother, his doing unethical things at his undertaker job and getting caught, and his getting engaged to two very different women. There is, however, one other woman he likes and her name is Liz played by Ms. Christie in what seemed a big break for her especially considering how Schlesinger has her photographed in her initial scenes. And how she just oozes charm every time she talks! Anyway, there's plenty of hilarious scenes concerning Billy's dreams but also much sadness with the way things turn out as the film goes on. I probably need to see this again to really get all the scenes not to mention the fast-talking dialogue here especially with all the British terms sprinkled throughout. Still, I highly recommend Billy Liar especially those interested in the early career of one Julie Christie.

Syl Billy Liar is played wonderfully by Sir Tom Courtenay. Other cast members include Mona Washbourne, Leonard Rossiter, Julie Christie (who isn't a Dame) and Anna Wing. The story about a Northern British young man in Yorkshire who dreams about being king in a foreign land is quite understandable. Billy wants to escape his dreary existence from his parents and the small village in which he lives in. Mona Washbourne plays his mother. He has a great imagination but only if he could put it to use. He dreams of running away to start fresh but he's plagued by doubts, fears, and frightening of what might lie ahead. Julie Christie plays the girl that is going to London. The question is if he will join her too on this journey to a big city.