Directed by John Schlesinger and written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, a young Englishman dreams of escaping from his working class family and dead-end job as an undertaker’s assistant. A number of indiscretions cause him to lie in order to avoid the penalties. His life turns into a mess, and he has an opportunity to run away and leave it all behind. Starring: Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne, Ethel Griffies, Finlay Currie, Gwendolyn Watts, Helen Fraser and Leonard Rossiter.
Back in the day, there was such a love of slapstick, silly, clumsy comedy and Billy Liar is a pretty great example of that. It’s extremely British, takes nothing seriously and doesn’t care much for responsibility or maturity. In that sense, it’s not going to be for everyone, and works best if you can view it through a nostalgic, giving lens, as if you try to question the sheer number of things he gets away with, with fairly little consequences, the whole thing is going to fall apart. It requires a certain amount of cinematic license.
The filmmakers do a great job of capturing that overactive imagination, but it doesn’t always feel perfectly integrated into the story. It can have a degree of separation, and his fantasies do tend to repeat the same theme of military adventures, although that makes sense for the era. It’s solid, the story works, but it is missing something, a bigger variety to those fantasies, a bigger risk or more impactful consequences to his frivolous lies and selfish behaviour. It’s perhaps a touch too light-hearted, it needed to bring itself back down to earth to be able to pack more of a punch, although the ending does make a decent effort.
Tom Courtenay is unsurprisingly great at creating that pie in the sky, head in the clouds, dreamer personality. This could very easily be an irritating character since he has no awareness or concept of consequence, but Courtenay gives him a bumbling yet not entirely incapable charm. Although it does feel like a fairly good example of how men were babied in that era and grew up with no knowledge of how to take care of themselves, cook or clean without a wife. Not to mention how he managed to have multiple women interested in him, given his overtly boyish, immature personality, is slightly difficult to believe. Again, you do have to let some things slide to get the most out of this one.
Billy Liar is basically the 1960s equivalent of today’s throwaway comedies, it’s easy viewing, it’s not at all serious, it’s very simple entertainment. It has a sense of humour which is quintessential of Britain in that era which you’ll either enjoy or won’t. Tom Courtenay gives a strong performance and he’s at his best alongside the charming Julie Christie as Liz who feels like the only character who challenge’s Billy’s lies and it brings out a much more interesting side to the film. It has its ups and downs, not everything works perfectly but it makes for some nostalgic viewing.
FilmCarnage.com 