Billy Liar ***** (1963, Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne, Ethel Griffies, Finlay Currie, Rodney Bewes, Leonard Rossiter) – Classic Movie Review 6,330

John Schlesinger’s 1963 British New Wave film Billy Liar blends kitchen-sink drama, satirical humour and fantasy to brilliant effect. Tom Courtenay is superb as the undertaker’s clerk who lives in a world of dreams, while Julie Christie is incandescent.

Director John Schlesinger’s 1963 triumph Billy Liar is a stupendous Sixties British New Wave film that blends kitchen-sink drama, satirical humour and Walter Mitty-like fantasy to brilliant effect. Tom Courtenay is superb as the young British undertaker’s clerk Billy Fisher who lives in a world of dreams, while Julie Christie is incandescent as Liz, the lovely Swinging Sixties young woman he adores.

Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall adapt their own 1960 play Billy Liar (originally from Waterhouse’s 1959 novel) and Schlesinger directs with a beadily accurate eye for humour, drama and poignancy that moves the viewer smoothly and delightfully from laughter to tears and to a little joy.

The story was later adapted into a TV series (1973–1974, starring Jeff Rawle as Billy) and 1974 stage musical called Billy (starring Michael Crawford and Elaine Paige in her West End debut) that confirmed Billy’s continuing popularity. There was also a short-lived American sitcom adaptation titled Billy, starring Steve Guttenberg on CBS in 1979.

But the film remains an enduring landmark film from the Sixties. It was nominated for six Bafta awards and shamefully did not win a single one. It was nominated for the Golden Lion at Venice and did not win.

It co-stars Wilfred Pickles and Mona Washbourne as the parents Geoffrey and Alice Fisher, Ethel Griffies as Grandma Florence, Finlay Currie as the glum but kindly Duxbury, Rodney Bewes as Biilly’s co-worker Arthur Crabtree, and Leonard Rossiter, who is tremendous as Emanuel Shadrack, the weasly boss of Billy’s grim English North Country undertaker’s office. Now that is quite a line-up!

Chubby-cheeked British comedy actor Rodney Bewes (27 November 1937 – 21 November 2017) plays Arthur Crabtree, alongside his close friend Tom Courtenay. They shared a flat at the time. Bewes saw Courtenay’s script and approached the casting director to win the part. The following year Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais cast Bewes in his TV hit The Likely Lads after seeing him in Billy Liar.

Also in the cast are Leslie Randall (as TV personality Danny Boon), Helen Fraser as Barbara, Gwendolyn Watts as Rita, George Innes as Stamp, Godfrey Winn (Disc Jockey), Ernest Clark (Prison Governor), Patrick Barr (Inspector MacDonald) and Anna Wing.

It is impressively shot in black and white and CinemaScope by English cinematographer Denys Coop on real locations, many of them in the city of Bradford in Yorkshire. Denys Coop (20 July 1920 – 16 August 1981) was one of the finest black and white cinematographers of his generation and was nominated for three consecutive BAFTA Awards for Best Cinematography (Black-and-White) for Billy Liar (1963), King and Country (1964), and Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965). He also shot the black and white gem This Sporting Life (1963).

The film was released on 15 August 1963 at the Warner Theatre in Leicester Square, in London’s West End.

It is the second of John Schlesinger’s two films financed by Nat Cohen of Anglo-Amalgamated, after the director’s debut with A Kind of Loving.

Billy Liar is directed by John Schlesinger, runs 98 minutes, is made by Vic Films Productions and Waterhall Productions, is released by Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors and Warner-Pathé, is shot in black and white and CinemaScope by Denys Coop, is produced by Joseph Janni, and is scored by Richard Rodney Bennett.

The cast

The cast are Tom Courtenay as Billy Fisher [William Terrence Fisher], Wilfred Pickles as Geoffrey Fisher, Mona Washbourne as Alice Fisher, Ethel Griffies as Billy’s grandmother Florence, Finlay Currie as Duxbury, Gwendolyn Watts as Rita, Helen Fraser as Barbara, Julie Christie as Liz, Leonard Rossiter as Emanuel Shadrack, Rodney Bewes as Arthur Crabtree, George Innes as Stamp, Leslie Randall as Danny Boon, Patrick Barr as Inspector MacDonald, Ernest Clark as prison governor, Godfrey Winn as Disc Jockey, and Anna Wing.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6,330

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