Still image from the 1963 film Billy Liar.

Billy Liar

Directed by John Schlesinger

An emotionally stunted clerk retreats into his fantasies.

1963 1h 36m Comedy TV-PG

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CAST
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John Schlesinger, Director
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John Schlesinger
Director

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Tom Courtenay, Billy Fisher
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Tom Courtenay
Billy Fisher

2

Julie Christie, Liz
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Julie Christie
Liz

3

Wilfred Pickles, Geoffrey Fisher
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Wilfred Pickles
Geoffrey Fisher

4

Mona Washbourne, Alice Fisher
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Mona Washbourne
Alice Fisher

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Ethel Griffies, Grandmother Florence
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Ethel Griffies
Grandmother Florence

FULL SYNOPSIS

Billy Fisher's wild imagination is his only escape from a humdrum life in a northern England town. Whenever his stifling job as a clerk in an undertaker's office becomes too much for him or when his family's nagging efforts to make him conform overpower him, Billy retreats to "Ambrosia," a mythical kingdom conjured up in his mind. In "Ambrosia," Billy is king, general, lover, or any idealized hero that the situation of the moment makes him desire. Billy's dream of becoming a television scriptwriter in London has been encouraged by a well-known comedian to whom he sent samples of his writing. Before he can take any decisive step, however, Billy has two problems to settle: he is engaged to two different girls and in love with a third, and he must dispose of his employer's advertising calendars which he was unable to mail months earlier because he spent the postage money. On the day the comedian is scheduled to make an appearance in town, Billy offers his resignation to his employer, Mr. Shadrack. He is informed, however, that Shadrack knows about the calendars and that he will either have to make restitution or work off the debt. Later that afternoon, in a meeting with the comedian, Billy learns that the encouragement he received was merely a form letter. And at a dance that night, Billy's efforts to divide his time between both fiancées fail. The women come face to face and get into a hair-pulling battle, and both subsequently break their engagements to Billy. He escapes to a nearby park with Liz, the wild, unconventional woman he really loves. Liz convinces him to take his chances at making a success of his writing and leave with her for London at midnight. When he goes home to pack and inform his parents of his departure, he learns that his grandmother has been hospitalized. At the hospital, Billy is told of his grandmother's death, but he still plans to leave and bids farewell to his mother. He and Liz board the London train, but at the last moment he gets off, and the train leaves with Liz. Billy returns to the monotony of his small town life and to the security of "Ambrosia."


VIDEOS
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ARTICLES
The comic story of an imaginative young man who escapes his dull home life , numbing job and dreary industrial town through wild fantasies and fabrications, John Schlesinger's Billy Liar (1963) is often described as a British version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947). You can trace the roots back to James Thurber's original story, but it's nothing like the Danny Kaye movie of the meek dreamer turned courageous hero. Set in "the provinces" of the industrial north of England in the early sixties, it explores the same fears and frustrations that roil through Look Back in Anger [1958], The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner [1962], This Sporting Life [1963] and other films of the early British New Wave of "angry young man" films. The difference is perspective: this portrait of ambition aching to break out of suffocating conformity and social expectation is viewed through the prism of fantasy and puckish humor and accomplished with a sprightly style and a succession of zany asides that, like Billy's fantasies, pinballs through the conventional world around it. Tom Courtenay's Billy Fisher has boundless imagination but little discipline. "He can't say two words without telling a lie," complains Billy's dad (Wilfred Pickles), and he's not far from wrong. Fabrication is reflex with Billy, and not merely out of self-aggrandizement. It's an escape from a humdrum life, a game, an improvisational challenge in a world of straightmen, and Courtenay (who had earlier played ...

ARCHIVES
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 Movie Poster from the movie 'Billy Liar'
Billy Liar
Movie Poster

NOTES

Opened in London in August 1963; running time: 98 min.

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