Three women who resemble the andrews sisters are singing. The publication of billy liar 50 years ago this month was a groundbreaking event. The fashions may have come and gone since john schlesinger commited keith waterhouse and willis halls story of a young man torn between his family and the future to film but billy liar is still suprisingly light on his feet 50 years down the line. He periodically escapes the drudgery of his job at a funeral parlor by conjuring up impossible adventures, usually involving the conquest of women.
In spite of its bitter edge, billy liar is pure ambrosia. I like the idea of the controversy the film courted for the use of the word pissed, which was one of the first uses of swear language on a major feature film, which makes me think that this is a 1960s comedy similar to the comedies of the 2000s like the hangover and that while billy liars content is tame by todays standards, it. This film doesnt exhibit any of these tropes at all and anyway theyre at the jewellers for repair. Keith spencer waterhouse 6 february 1929 4 september 2009 was an english novelist, playwright, screenwriter and journalist. Billy has the bad habit of being a pathological liar and reverting to an imaginary world where he dreams he is the. Billy liar 1963 movie clip open, good morning housewives. Tom courtenay brings a jittery energy to billy fisher nicknamed billy liar by his chums because of his ability to spin a tall tale. That creates great expectations, and billy liar lived up to them. A spinner of fantasies beset by deep indecision the. Billy liar is the chronicle of one decisive day in the life of its protagonist billy fisher. A key work of the new british cinema, billy liar features the impressive debut of director john schlesinger and his first teaming with julie christie before darling. Tom courtenay dominates with a performance that vacillates between callousness and. Essay on a comparison between billy liar and shirley valentine 984 words 4 pages.
The kids in the hall billy dreamer character is based loosely on billy liar. Originally a novel, it was adapted by willis hall and keith waterhouse for performance. Billy is a world famous poet, a celebrated thinker, a decorated soldier and a great lover. Billy yearns to get away from his stifling existence. Billy fisher tom courtenay is known to his bluecollar british mates as billy liar because of his vivid imagination. This shot is a fantasy, imagined by a character who wouldnt have the slightest notion what such a performance would look like. He was a british cinematographer and film director in the 20th century.
Still from the film version of billy liar, with leonard rossiter left and tom courtenay in the title role. Moving seamlessly between realism and fantasy, billy liar is an alternately hilarious and poignant portrait of postwar british society. Keith waterhouses early novel proved to be his best, featuring regional speech, workingclass characters and, best of all, a central character whose name would pass into popular mythology. Scott looks back at john schlesingers film about an inveterate daydreamer. Billy liar was always a terrific film, but like so many of its kitchensink contemporaries saturday night and sunday morning, a kind of loving it has actually grown in substance and depth since. Waterhouse was a bright, imaginative lad from leeds who worked in an undertakers after flunking the 11plus. I certainly knew who julie christie was, and i vaguely remembered tom courtenay in the loneliness of the long distance runner, so i ran it. Which in the early 1960s is what most gay men and women experienced. As i was watching it on latenight tv, i found myself on the edge of my seat, gripping the arms of my chair, trying not to yell at the main character, billy fisher, near the end of the film. This film followed major successes by both its director, john schlesinger, who was coming off a kind of loving, and its star, tom courtenay, who had just established himself as a major actor with the loneliness of the long distance runner.
Julie christie is the handbagswinging charmer whose free spirit just might inspire billy to finally move out of his parents house. British filming locations for the movie billy liar 1963 including maps, screenshots, and other nearby film locations. Much of this fantasy life is centred on an imaginary country called ambrosia, where billy is the ruler and military hero. Billy liar was turned into a successful play in 1960, a film in 1963, and a musical in 1974.
Tom courtenay and julie christie in billy liar but all of billys fantasies are crushed like eggshells when we get right down to it. He continually fantasizes his life away to avoid facing the more mundane truth of his existence. He is soon brought back to reality by his mothers call for breakfast. What makes this little black and white film so absorbing. Fifty years on, billy liar has not grown old books the. At a spare 95 minutes, this is a film of no wasted scenes or unnecessary subplots, stripped down to something.
More a slice of british postwar youthculture history. I was not expecting anything remotely close to what i just saw in john schlesingers billy liar. Peter bradshaw kicks off our new series on the films our writers think are overrated by bursting billy liars bubble, which starred tom courtenay. When i first encountered billy liar in the early 1970s, id never heard of it. Billy liar on location leeds, bradford yorkshire film. If you like billy liar you are looking for realistic, humorous and touching movies about with train, lie, working class, coming of age, love and romance, dull life and realism themes of comedy, drama and romance genre shot in uk. Billy liar the play billy liar was first produced in london on th september 1960. Unfortunately he is only any of these things in his imagination. He also makes up stories about himself and his family to make life more interesting, earning him the nickname billy liar. Marylebone station london even this film is not all the real north, though. Enter your location to see which movie theaters are playing billy liar near you. The song william, it was really nothing by the smiths took inspiration from the book. Tom courtenay plays the character of william fisher, a young man who, most of the time, lives in the imaginary world of ambrosia, a world he has created in his dreams so that he can conveniently escapes the reality of his life.
Waterhouse manages to keep his central character fairly sympathetic despite his increasing ledger of peccadilloes, and there is an emotional heft to the last chapter, when billy finally acknowledges that i did not believe what i. Billy has the bad habit of being a pathological liar and reverting to an imaginary world where he dreams he is the dictator of a fictional country. Alice fisher is too busy keeping the house neat and tidy and fretting about keeping up appearances to have much time for billy. She brings up details i never would have related to billy liar. One of the characters in billy liar, arthur crabtree, was actually a real person. I cannot remember the last time i watched a comedy, that featured jawdropping, blackandwhite cinematography. The kino bluray includes a new audio commentary by film historian kat ellinger who knocks it out of the park in terms of deep analysis of the film. Also sign me up for fanmail to get updates on all things movies. Billy liar is basically an autobiographical film for anyone who loves to daydream and get away with mischief. Released in 1963 the same year as the servant, billy liar was the second film directed by john schlesinger, after the more conventionally realist a kind of loving. Billy liar is a compelling film for any male who ever had misgivings about his place in the world, and particularly for ambitious dreamers the kind whose dreams are not wellreceived by those around him. He leaves the train to buy milk from a vending machine and watches the train slowly pull out for london with liz aboard.
This film gives an interesting look at the production of billy liar as portions of the leeds and bradford location shoots have been documented on this film. Filmed in 1962, this film captures a behind the scenes look at part of the making of the john schlesinger film, billy liar 1963. Schlesingers billy tom courtenay is a confused young man with too much imagination for considering kitchen sinks. Its a transition film for the uk, from the naturalism of the angry young man dramas of the early 60s, into the lighter comedies that came along when london. A comparison between billy liar and shirley valentine i have just been studying billy liar and performing it as part of my mock scripted drama gcse, and have been asked to compare this theatre script to the film script of shirley valentine. Billy liar is lively, funny and short so what more could we ask for. Tom courtenay gives a flawlessly nuanced performance as billy fisher, the underachieving undertakers assistant whose constant daydreams and truthdeficient stories earn him the nickname billy liar. He is having such a dream when the film begins in which he is a returning war hero passing through crowds of applauding people.
This film version of the keith waterhousewillis hall stage play visualizes some of billys more outrageous fabrications. Billy liar has been shot in 1963 in the northern part of england and is the second movie of john schlesinger. However, when a beautiful, freespirited old flame comes back to town, billy is given a chance to escape for real but. Some 50 years ago, billy liar became a cinematic hero but, argues john walsh, it was julie. Geoffrey fisher has a foul temper and is constantly denigrating his son. Billy fisher tom courtenay works by day as a clerk in an undertakers office but lives his dreams in his own imaginary world. Billy liar retrospective bradford yorkshire youtube. Directed by john schlesinger, it stars tom courtenay who had understudied albert finney in the west end theatre adaptation of the novel as billy, and julie christie as liz, one of his three girlfriends. Billy still hasnt come to grips with the real world by the end of the film. Deftly veering from gritty realism to flamboyant fantasy, billy liar is a dazzling and uproarious classic. Billy the main character in the performance lives in a lower middle class family and is subconsciously trapped by their social class. Fascinating opening title sequence from john schlesingers billy liar, 1963, starring tom courtenay, built around a radio program godfrey winn the dj and shot primarily around bradford, west yorkshire.
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