Billy Liar (1963)Billed as a "gay" movie by TCM when they played this in 2017, and the basis for that is fair enough—director John Schlesinger was openly gay, and the feeling of this film is very much about being an outsider to a larger culture. Which in the early 1960s is what most gay men (and women) experienced.Heads up—this is a very British film, and it's on the cusp of a new Britain, getting out from World War II burdens and about to see the Beatles take over the world. In short, Mod England is in full swing, and the surprising new actress Julie Christie is key here. Maybe I'm just a guy, but I think the charm and honest presence of Christie from the first glimpse in a lorry (truck for you Americans) is a spark of life that tips the movie over. Great stuff.The star however is the title character, played by Tom Courtenay, whose real character name is Billy Fisher. He's terrific, playing a cad of sorts, someone who lives by effect, a former soldier (in his head) who has settled uncomfortably into his beloved England. The pace is crisp and the fast cuts are unusual for the time. There are oddities—early on he plays blackface in one scene (in his imagination), a woman in another (also daydreaming). It's farce top to bottom, and raw comedy. I think the British laughed harder by far than us poor Americans, but it's a lark and a fancy through and through. The flavor of it reminds me of "A Hard Days Night" and in fact they both come out of the so called British New Cinema.The film is imaginative in its structure, depending on the wandering thoughts of Billy to change the scene at will. It's cheeky but clever, and keeps you looking. And chuckling. As a comedy it might not be uproarious, but it never lets up its absurdity. It's called Billy Liar because Billy succeeds with his co-workers and family by making things up. Endlessly.Eventually you have to ask if the film can be read as an insight into being a gay man in these times. Certainly it can. It cheerfully points out how painful it is to be misunderstood and maligned for no good reason. It was easy to understand Billy as a a would-be success pushed down by his willing non-conformity. But it is also troubling to admit that this is something that is insinuated by TCM at the start—if you see the movie as a straight movie about an eccentric (not gay in particular) it has a different and less serious feel. Maybe it's fair to let it be both, or let it float depending on the viewer. Because it remains fast, inventive, and funny throughout. Even the camera-work is fun, with lots of wide angle and with moving pans across landscapes that distort the world. Appropriately.The final verdict: this is a film about the new England, the land of youth poking fun at the serious old school England of lore (and of WWII). It attacks this with necessary humor (not to offend absolutely everyone) and with visual pizazz. It wears slightly thin at times, and you do wonder what really matters about this aimless chap, but in all it's refreshing and revealing of the era. And it has Julie Christie in her first film. As she says with revealing authority, "I don't want to get engaged, I want to get married." Yeah.

Billy Liar is a very unique character study that is already in your face at the very start of the film. As Billy called downstairs to eat, he can't help lying in bed for a few minutes longer to fantasize about him being in an era of war, missing an arm and being a war hero.His distracted personality keeps him unorganized and lazy when it comes to work. Billy has failed to post calendars and we see them all shoved into a cabinet in his room, revealing he never intended to do something that was essential for his job. He lives with his family though he has a job that is above the lower-working class: he works at a funeral parlor.Billy has a dream to become a script-writer for a famous comedian, and he talks about it as if it was a certainty that he would get the job, though when he calls their office the secretary explains the man was not expecting a call from Billy, but Billy plays it off while people are listening that this comedian is eagerly awaiting him. Thus we see he cannot face the reality of the situation, and this amongst many other lies earns him his titular label: Billy Liar.Billy also doesn't know what he wants in a relationship, so he lies to two different girls he is dating that each are the only one in his life, and from what the girls say it sounds like he is engaged to both of them. Billy has to hide behind his lies because he simply doesn't know how to interact with other people.His constant daydreaming is the highlight of the film, hitting home the fact that he is living in his own fantasy world while he can't face the reality of his disappointing life. He lies to his family and friends, but when those lies are spread in public Billy can't take it and becomes embarrassed. This is a very good film both about fantasy and realism and they affect the central character.3.5/4.0

In a world, Billy Fisher is a war hero, beloved despot, acclaimed novelist, writer of the reform-producing prison memoir "I Have Paid," and grandson of the woman who invented radium and penicillin (presumably not simultaneously).Unfortunately for Billy, this world exists only in his imagination. The rest of the time, he fights a losing battle with grim reality in the Yorkshire city where he lives, toiling as a mortician's clerk while dreaming of making a name for himself in London and lying whenever he feels threatened by reality, which is often.Tom Courtenay plays Billy as a mixture of dreamer and low-grade sociopath, drawing both our sympathy and scorn. Taken from an even bleaker comic novel by co-screenwriter Keith Waterhouse, "Billy Liar" is an enigma of a movie, directed by a man, John Schlesinger, who liked to make enigmatic films. Surrealistic yet gritty, "Billy Liar" throws a lot of comedic curves at the viewer, yet leaves you with heavier feelings."I turn over a new leaf every day, but the blots show through," is how Billy explains it to the one person who seems to understand, the radiant gadabout Liz (Julie Christie). Liz tells Billy he doesn't need to be stuck in his northern town; he can go to London like she does any time he wants. But of course it's not that simple, especially if you are a cheat and a coward at heart.The fantasy sequences are low-key but effective. We see Billy leading a parade where he also appears as various soldiers. A newspaper advertisement features an article about Billy with the headline: "Genius Or Madman?" When he's with one of the two young women he is presently engaged to, he imagines her slinking over to his bed in a negligee until his reverie is cut short when she catches his hand on her thigh.Schlesinger works the comedy more than the novel did, a good thing as "Billy Liar" needs a light touch. It is a rare film that marries the kitchen-sink drama of British films being made at the time with more farcical elements, but the drama is ever-present and gets more thick as the movie goes on. Even the humor has an unpleasant edge: One of the biggest laughs comes when we see Billy cut down his boss (Leonard Rossiter) with a tommy gun.Billy bickers constantly with his sullen father, while dismissing his mother rather heartlessly. "I'm not ordinary folk, even if she is," he says, after shaking off her attempt to talk some sense into him. Billy's just not that likable, even apart from his serial lying. The trick of the film is the way it gets you to pull for him anyway. We see how up against it he is, in the way Courtenay shrugs and smiles and drifts back into fantasy, losing precious time all the while."Billy Liar" could have been more fun and less dour, but that would have cut against its message of antic despair. You know what Billy should do with his life, and you know he knows it, too, but like Liz you see also how a dreamer's life can get in the way with reality, and understand why the future belongs to her, not him.

Tom Courtenay stars as Billy, an unhappy clerk who still lives at home with his impatient family. To escape the drudgery of his life, Billy passes the time telling outrageous lies and fantasizing about his very own country where he is the beloved ruler and war hero.I must admit I didn't know this movie was considered a comedy until I read some reviews. While the fantasy sequences are certainly amusing, Billy's day-to-day existence is lonely, unfulfilling, and depressing. I found Tom Courtenay to be adequate but dull and unsympathetic. On the other hand, Julie Christie is remarkably confident, mature, and charismatic and the screen really lights up during her few scenes. The black and white movie was one of the first in the sixties to feature the working class in all it's gritty glory. (I wish the DVD had had subtitles to help me with the thick north-of-England accents.) The movie is similar to Danny Kaye's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but the humor is much more subtle. I thought the dramatic scenes lacked heart-felt pathos and I never liked or felt sorry for Billy. Watch it for its place in British film history and for the screen debut of the lovely Miss Christie.