Billy Liar (1963) - film review

Billy Fisher is 19, lives with his parents in a glum north English town and works as a desk clerk for a firm of undertakers.  He retreats from the boredom of his everyday existence into his own dream world, Ambrosia, where he is the leader of a great militaristic nation.  Billy is also a compulsive liar and now tries to convince everyone that he has been offered a job writing gags for the famous comedian Danny Boon.  Billy’s economy with the truth is about to get him into hot water, particularly with the two girls he has managed to get himself engaged to.  The only person who seems to understand him is Liz, his third girlfriend.  She offers him the chance to start a new life with her in London...

One of the enduring classics of 1960s British cinema, Billy Liar is a sublime example of the British New Wave, combing gritty realism, comedy and fantasy into a poignant character study of a no-hoper who is forever trapped in his working class milieu.  The film was based on a popular West End play (first performed in 1960), which was itself derived from a novel by the well-known British journalist Keith Waterhouse.  The central idea clearly derives from James Thurber’s short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Billy Liar deals with a theme that was popular in British and American cinema at the time – a young person rebelling against the crushing tedium and injustices of adult life.  Here, the hero fights the system not by openly revolting against it but by flitting in and out of his imaginary world in which he is the ruler, dispensing sadistic death to all who displease him.  The tragedy is that Billy’s fantasy exerts such a hold on him that he is incapable of changing the real world or even escaping from it to make a better life for himself.  He is trapped and will ultimately learn to accept the mediocrity into which he was born. 

Using real industrial locations (in Bradford, Yorkshire) and depicting familiar, down-to-Earth situations, the film has the stark realist style of the kitchen sink dramas of the period, something that adds greatly to the poignancy of the hero’s predicament.  We can appreciate why Billy needs to escape to somewhere better;  Ambrosia, with its pomp and pageantry, is a young man’s Paradise in comparison with the tatty grey-washed reality of Stradhoughton, the town in which he lives.

John Schlesinger’s direction is as slick and imaginative as the stylish black and white cinematography is beguiling. The quality of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s screenplay is amply matched by the arresting character performances.  Tom Courtenay portrays the mythomaniac Billy so convincingly and with such sympathy that the downbeat ending has the impact of a Greek tragedy (the actor had previously played the part in the West End stage play, having taken over the role from Albert Finney).  The excellent supporting cast includes such well-known faces as Leonard Rossiter and Rodney Bewes, who would both have high-profile careers on television over the following decade.  Within a few years of appearing in this film, Julie Christie would become one of British cinema’s best-known icons.

In the mid-1970s, Billy Liar was made into a popular British TV sitcom (with Jeff Rawle playing Billy) and then a West End musical entitled Billy (starring Michael Crawford).  However, neither of these is a patch on John Schlesinger’s magnificent 1963 film, which is still considered one of the triumphs of post-war British cinema.

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