Billy Liar - Criterion Collection (1963)

Tom Courtenay gives a flawlessly nuanced performance as Billy Fisher, the underachieving undertaker's assistant whose constant daydreams and truth-deficient stories earn him the nickname "Billy Liar." Julie Christie is the handbag-swinging charmer whose free spirit just might inspire Billy to finally move out of his parents' house. Deftly veering from gritty realism to flamboyant fantasy, Billy Liar is a dazzling and uproarious classic.

Sadly funny comedy

Billy Fisher (Tom Courtney) is a bored young man living in a drab, working class English community. He dreams of doing great things but is incapable of handling the everyday reality of jobs and relationships, instead finding refuge in a world of fantasy.

Courtney is great in the title role. His ability to complete transfigure his face with a change of expression is sometimes quite startling. There are many funny moments in this excellent film, but under it all is a deep sense of hopelessness at Billy's inability to face the world. The end of the film is honest and revealing. Julie Christie makes her debut, sparkling in the role of the one person who offers Billy a way out of his self-constructed trap.
November 15, 2008

Billy Liar

Melding British kitchen-sink realism with fanciful sequences that dramatize Billy's reveries, director Schlesinger got his name on the map with this brilliant satire, partly inspired by James Thurber's classic story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." Courtenay is a marvel as Billy, the blue-collar drudge whose reliance on his inner life earns him a reputation as an unreliable dreamer. Mona Washbourne also excels as Alice, Billy's daffy, sympathetic mother. June 27, 2007

JULIE CHRISTIE!

"Billy Liar," directed by Oscar winner John Schlesinger (Best Director, 'Midnight Cowboy') is billed as a comedy, but to me is much more of a tragedy with bits of comedy thrown in here and there. Presented by The Criterion Collection, "Billy Liar" is a little treasure of a film that is worth seeing for many reasons, but one big one...JULIE CHRISTIE.

Tom Courtenay gives an absolutely brilliant performance as Billy Fisher, an undertaker's assistant that lives with his parents and has two fiancees. Fisher longs for escape and constantly daydreams of being the leader of a country and of shooting people he doesn't like. He also has a problem with telling the truth and frequently finds himself in jams that he must lie to get out of. This earns him the nickname Billy Liar, but not until much later in the film. Christie plays Liz, a free-spirited woman who has so little screen time but makes a very big impression on the audience.

Any review you read of "Billy Liar" will mention how fantastic Julie Christie is. She's incredibly beautiful, incredibly talented, and steals the show. The movie is about 75% comedy and much of the first 3/4 of it play as a comedy, but I thought the last part of the film had a completely dramatic change of tone...Which, in my opinion, worked for the better. The end is especially tragic. "Billy Liar" is a fantastic film that few people have heard of that definitely needs to be seen by more people, I highly recommend it.
GRADE: A
May 4, 2007

Funny and brilliant, like watching a juggler handle five balls at the same time

Walter Mitty gone mad on the cutting edge, and set in England. Tom Courtenay is Billy, a perpetual liar; he's trapped in his own drab, stifling northern England surroundings, and his only escape is a fantasy world he's concocted. Where Mitty would just innocently imagine another time and place for himself, Billy involves everyone around him in his chronic lying. Sometimes the lies are connected with the fantasies (going to London to write TV scripts, for example), but usually they are just outright lies not connected to anything: he's engaged to two women at the same time, he lies to his boss and family about what he's up to, are just two examples. Mitty was henpecked by his wife; Billy by his whole world.

Courtenay is brilliant, and the intercutting of his fantasies with the real world is also excellently done. The message is universal: we all feel trapped at times and wish we could escape; we either do escape or somehow find a rational way to cope. For Billy, there's no way to do either. He almost escapes at the end with Julie Christie, who has a small role as a creature who CAN escape at will, but he chickens out. The acting, the script, even the photography, are all superb. Definitely worth a watch. March 20, 2006

Living in Ambrosia

Sometime the prospect of reality is so burdensome, a retreat into fantasy affords the only opportunity for escape. Indeed, isn't this the domain of the artist? If so, is Billy really a liar? He's created an entire country in his mind called Ambrosia, and in order to provide for its existence he must maintain the fiction that is his "real" life. What is real for Billy? He's engaged to two girls, both of whom are representations of opposite poles of a dreary domestic existence. He's employed by a mortuary, controlled by two men, one who wants to modernize the industry by creating sleek new caskets made out of plastic and the other who longs for the formality and perhaps dignity of a time long since past. Billy lives in a working class town where all the old buildings are gradually being torn down and replaced by modern structures like supermarkets! Should Billy "grow-up" which actually means waking up (something Billy is loath to do) and accept his station in life? And give up Ambrosia!? Enter Liz (the alluring Julie Christie) who strides into town like a breath of fresh air evoking boundless possibilities. She can offer Billy an alternative: to venture out into the unknown. While Billy is brave and daring in his imaginary kingdom, when confronted by the frightening prospect of the unfamiliar and real, will he seize the opportunity or retreat back into Ambrosia? January 27, 2005

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