Cheap Billy Liar - Criterion Collection (DVD) (Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie) (John Schlesinger) Price

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Customer Reviews of Billy Liar - Criterion Collection

The first cinematic slacker, maybe?
A surreal comedy set during England’s swinging sixties. Tom Courtney is unbelievably funny as a working class boy unable to leave the safety of his family home and venture out on his own. He creates a fantastic world he retreats to when his daily encounters and unconventional actions get out of hand. Not even Julie Christie can drag him out into reality.
One of the most entertaining films in cinema history, Billy Liar is a universal character that has surely set the bases for many slacker characters in film since then.
The Criterion version of the DVD offers extras as opposed to the English version.

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Visually delightful comedy with a twist¿
A young dreamer, Billy Fisher, lives a boring life in a small town of England. When he does not have to do anything he dreams of being someone in his fantasy world, Ambrosia. In the real world he has committed some petty misdemeanors and these are now about to catch up with him. In order to stay afloat, Billy has been forced to lie, but the lies have begun to accumulate and could slap him in the face at any moment. Thus, he is patching up his lies with other lies until he is so deep that there is no return. Billy also dreams of being a script writer for a famous comedian in London, but no one really believes him because he has been caught in his lies too many times. One day when an opportunity surfaces where his dream of script writing can become reality, he is put on a crossroads. Will he have the courage to see through it, or will he remain a dreamer? Billy Liar is an exceptionally fascinating story that is depicted with clever thoughtfulness, which leaves the audience with an extraordinary cinematic happening.

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The Kitchen Sink Comedy That Still Makes You Laugh
"Billy Liar" was made in 1963 three years after my birth and I can just remember Britian being like this; but it is not just a nostalgia trip. This is a beautifully executed piece of film making works from the opening, when we see a nation's homemakers brought together by the BBC's "Housewife's Choice", to the end when the battered and degected Billy walks up the hill to his parents semi-detached house at the head of his make believe army.

In between we get to witness Billy's fantastic imagination at work vividly brought to life in mock news-reel form and the chaos of his real life as his past mistakes catch up and eventually overwelm him.

The central problem Billy faces is one that most if not all young people experience at some time; the desire to do something great and become important and the feeling that they are being constrained and inhibited by the older generation's lack of vision.

It is not easy to distinguish who is responsible for what. The writers Wallis Hall and Keith Waterhouse obviously deserve a great deal of credit as they also wrote the novel and stage play but John Schlesenger's direction and the superb cast bring the film to life.

Schlesenger came from a BBC television background and the opening sequence as well as the Danny Boon character seem very authentic. Danny Boon, played by Leslie Randall, is the type of British comedian that used to and in some cases still does, present game shows on television in the UK complete with irritating catch phrases and over fimiliarity with middle aged women. Intrestingly Wilfred Pickels, who plays Billy's father, was previously best known for his radio quiz show "Have a Go" but he is now best remembered for his roll here.

The great dicovery of the film has to be Julie Christie who breezes in and sweeps all before her checking her make-up in a C&A mirror (their last store closed in the UK this year) and swinging her handbag as she walks down the street. But it is her scenes with Tom Courtney's Billy where she comes alive. Although the makers regard her as fantacy figure in fact she is the only one who accepts him for what he is and offeres him a means of escape. The fact that he can't quite go through with it tells us so much about the diffidence that is at the centre of Billy's personality.

Criterion have given us an eccellant quality DVD with a superb director and leading actors commentry as well as a BBC documentary that puts the film in it's context of the British Kitchen Sink dramas that started in the late 1950's and echoes of which are still present in films like "The Full Monty" and Billy Elliot. Watch and enjoy.