Main Cast: Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne, Finlay Currie, Ethel Griffies
Release Year: 1963
Country: UK
Run Time: 94 minutes
Plot
Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) is known to his blue-collar British mates as Billy Liar because of his vivid imagination. This film version of the Keith Waterhouse-Willis Hall stage play "visualizes" some of Billy's more outrageous fabrications. He periodically escapes the drudgery of his job at a funeral parlor by conjuring up impossible adventures, usually involving the conquest of women. In one of her first film roles, Julie Christie plays one of two "real" girls who wish that Billy would come down to earth and pop the question. Following this film adaptation, Billy Liar was transformed into a stage musical, and later resurfaced as a British TV series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Rodney Bewes - Arthur Crabtree; Helen Fraser - Barbara; George Innes - Eric Stamp; Leonard Rossiter - Shadrack; Godfrey Winn - Himself; Ernest Clark - Prison Governor; Leslie Randall - Danny Boone; Gwendolyn Watts - Rita; Patrick Barr - Insp. Macdonald; Anna Wing - Mrs. Crabtree; George Ghent
Credit
Jack Rix - Associate Producer, John Schlesinger - Director, Roger Cherrill - Editor, Richard Rodney Bennett - Composer (Music Score), Ray Simm - Production Designer, Denys Coop - Cinematographer, Joseph Janni - Producer, Peter Handford - Sound/Sound Designer, Willis Hall - Screenwriter, Keith Waterhouse - Screenwriter, Keith Waterhouse - Book Author, Willis Hall - Play Author, Keith Waterhouse - Play Author
The film belongs to the British New Wave (or "kitchen sink drama") movement, inspired by the earlier French New Wave. Characteristic of the style is a documentary/cinéma vérité feel and the use of real locations (in this case the city of Bradford in Yorkshire). One sequence includes a very early use of a swear word ("pissed"), which was unusual by commercial film standards of the time; the word is uttered by Mona Washbourne.
In 2004 the magazineTotal Film named Billy Liar the 12th in their list of the greatest British Films of all time.
