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John Schlesinger's

Starring TOM COURTENAY
& JULIE CHRISTIE

(1963) As a speaker garbed in Ruritanian chic reaches his peroration, thousands in a football stadium rise to cheer; meanwhile, a ne'er-do-well undertaker's clerk battles fiancée overload against the twisting background of a neo-realistically observed, pre-Beatles dance hall. Of course they're both Tom Courtenay as Billy Fisher in Schlesinger's adaptation of the smash-hit West End play (from Keith Waterhouse's cult novel), a feckless aspiring comedy writer in a Yorkshire town with an endlessly nagging family, stuffy boss (Kubrick fave Leonard Rossiter's Biblically named Mr. Shadrack), an engagement ring whipped back-and-forth between primly nice brunette Helen Fraser and razor-tongued, blonde-beehived waitress Gwendolyn Watts, and a rich fantasy life that puts Walter Mitty to shame. But into reality steps old flame Julie Christie(!), introduced by a New-Wavish, purse-swinging saunter through town.

Alternately hilarious and mortifying (sometimes simultaneously, as during Billy's rant into Mr. Shadrack's intercom), this is one the finest - certainly the funniest - of the Brit New Wave's "stunted lives" sub-genre, with Billy's ticket out being both Christie and that scriptwriting gig in London for TV comic Danny Boon ("He likes me material!") - But Will He Take That Train? A British phenomenon (it spawned a popular TV series, a sequel to the original novel, and a successful stage musical), Billy's international success cemented Courtenay ("probably the best of Britain's new wave of young actors" - Variety) and Schlesinger (here cameoing in the funeral fantasy) as the champs of the frustrated working-class hero saga, with Christie's dazzling turn springboarding her to superstardom.

AVAILABLE ON DVD in the box set 10 YEARS OF RIALTO PICTURES
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Tom Courteney & Julie Christie in BILLY LIAR

Seldom, if ever, seen here since the 60s - and even then not in its original CinemaScope - Billy Liar is a "warm, witty, sensitive film: whatever happened later, something stirred in British cinema in the 60s." - Time Out (London). BEAUTIFUL 35mm SCOPE PRINT! A Rialto Pictures Release. Complete Notes on BILLY LIAR Criterion Collection's BILLY LIAR Page

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Selections from Amazon.com: Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse

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