Billy Liar ***** (1963, Tom Courtenay Julie Christie, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne, Ethel Griffies, Finlay Currie, Rodney Bewes, Leonard Rossiter) – Classic Movie Review 6330

Director John Schlesinger’s 1963 triumph is a stupendous British Sixties New Wave film that blends kitchen-sink drama, satirical humour and Walter Mitty-like fantasy to brilliant effect. Tom Courtenay is superb as the young British undertaker’s clerk Billy Fisher who lives in a world of dreams, while Julie Christie is incandescent as Liz, the lovely Swinging Sixties young woman he adores.

Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall adapt their own play (originally from Waterhouse’s novel) and Schlesinger directs with a beadily accurate eye for humour, drama and poignancy that moves the viewer smoothly and delightfully from laughter to tears and to a little joy.

The story was later adapted into a TV series and stage musical that confirmed Billy’s continuing popularity. But the film remains an enduring landmark film from the Sixties. It was nominated for six Bafta awards and shamefully did not win a single one. It was nominated for the Golden Lion at Venice and did not win.

It co-stars Wilfred Pickles and Mona Washbourne as the parents Geoffrey and Alice Fisher, Ethel Griffies as Grandma Florence, Finlay Currie as the glum but kindly Duxbury, Rodney Bewes as Biilly’s co-worker Arthur Crabtree, and Leonard Rossiter, who is tremendous as Emanuel Shadrack, the weasly boss of Billy’s grim English North Country undertaker’s office. Now that is quite a line-up!

Chubby-cheeked British comedy actor Rodney Bewes (27 November 1937 – 21 November 2017) plays Arthur Crabtree, alongside his close friend Tom Courtenay. They shared a flat at the time. Bewes saw Courtenay’s script and approached the casting director to win the part. The following year Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais cast Bewes in his TV hit The Likely Lads after seeing him in Billy Liar.

Also in the cast are Leslie Randall (as TV personality Danny Boon), Helen Fraser as Barbara, Gwendolyn Watts as Rita, George Innes as Stamp, Godfrey Winn (Disc Jockey), Ernest Clark (Prison Governor), Patrick Barr (Inspector MacDonald) and Anna Wing.

It is shot in black and white by Denys Coop, produced by Joseph Janni and scored by Richard Rodney Bennett.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6330

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