Billy Liar (1963)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

John Schlesinger

Writers:

Keith Waterhouse (novel)
Willis Hall (play) ...

Release Date:

16 December 1963 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot:

A lazy, irresponsible young clerk in provincial Northern England lives in his own fantasy world and makes emotionally immature decisions as he alienates friends and family.

Plot Keywords:

Ambrosia | Love | Train | Imagination | Milk

Awards:

Nominated for 6 BAFTA Film Awards. Another 1 nomination

Cast

Tom Courtenay	...	William Terrence 'Billy' Fisher
Wilfred Pickles	...	Geoffrey Fisher
Mona Washbourne	...	Alice Fisher
Ethel Griffies	...	Florence, Billy's grandmother
Finlay Currie	...	Duxbury
Gwendolyn Watts	...	Rita
Helen Fraser	...	Barbara
Julie Christie	...	Liz
Leonard Rossiter	...	Emanuel Shadrack
Rodney Bewes	...	Arthur Crabtree
George Innes	...	Stamp
Leslie Randall	...	Danny Boon
Patrick Barr	...	Insp. MacDonald
Ernest Clark	...	Prison governor
Godfrey Winn	...	Disc jockey

Runtime:

98 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

France:U | Portugal:17 | Sweden:11 | Iceland:L

Filming Locations:

37 Hinchcliffe Avenue, Baildon, West Yorkshire, England, UK

Company:

Vic Films Productions

Trivia:

First feature film of George Innes.

Quotes:

Emanuel Shadrack: So that's your ambition, is it? Scriptwriting?
William Terrence 'Billy' Fisher: Oh, yes, it always has been.
Emanuel Shadrack: Do you get a salary each week then, or do you get paid by the joke?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Un jour avec Peter (2005)

Soundtrack:

Twisterella

Maturing like good wine (and no lie!)

Tragi-comic misadventures of a young man who invents a fantasy world as cover for his troubles and dreary middle-class existence in sixties Yorkshire.

Billy Liar was always a terrific film, but like so many of its kitchen-sink contemporaries (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving) it has actually grown in substance and depth since its release. Part of the reason is the extensive use of on-location filming all these movies utilised: a post-war industrial landscape long since lost and therefore all the more vivid in its posterity. But where Billy Liar gets a bigger march on its predecessors - whether by intent or accident - is that it captures this landscape on the cusp of the swinging sixties, when architecture, culture, leisure and morality were all rapidly changing. In doing so it heralds many of the themes and issues that were to dominate western culture for the remainder of the 20th Century: pop culture, advertising, media obsession, celebrity, race relations and fantasy lifestyles.

Billy seemed an endearing but essentially lost soul in his day; an immature weakling unable to face up to the realities and responsibilities of adulthood. But looked at from the hindsight of 40 years he now seems symptomatic of what is today regarded as normal, almost aspirational, behaviour: self-absorption; avoidance of responsibility; glorification of celebrity; escape culture.

Whether director John Schelsinger and writers Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall foresaw all the cultural and sociological changes they captured is something only they would know (they surely couldn't have seen the significance of casting Julie Christie - one of the ultimate swinging sixties icons). Whatever the case, what makes Billy Liar such a fascinating film is the casual, uncritical and unselfconscious way its many themes are observed. Its lack of preachiness or self-righteousness help keep it a fresh and funny entertainment that can be enjoyed at that level. Its historical importance as a perfect snapshot of a country at a time of rapid and fundamental change is nothing less than priceless.