Billy Liar

Opening this film with the music from "Housewives' Choice" was a stroke of inspiration.The camera moves up a street with net curtains and we enter Billy Fisher's home.Here lives one of the greatest tragi-comic creations of the 1960s novel.Blessed with... Full review

This early 60's sly little comedy with Tom Courtenay as a Walter Mitty type is charming and one of Schlesinger's best. It also gives a wonderful supporting role to Julie Christie as a free-spirited girl who tries to get Billy... Full review

I was a teenager when the film was made, and immediately recognized the pictures of cities in the 60's, the cars, streets, buildings, the interior of the houses. Even so the way people looked and talked. Beautiful. I never read... Full review

Tragi-comic misadventures of a young man who invents a fantasy world as cover for his troubles and dreary middle-class existence in sixties Yorkshire.Billy Liar was always a terrific film, but like so many of its kitchen-sink contemporaries (Saturday Night and... Full review

A north of England funeral clerk is bored with his life and builds a world of elaborate lies to compensate for it.A classic of the English kitchen sink period, but it will not have full impact unless you are coming... Full review

Effective slice of life comedy/drama tells the story of scared, optimistic Billy (Tom Courtenay) who lives in a fantasy world where he's always a hero. Funny and charming, the film also packs a slight emotional punch that is somewhat similar... Full review

Most novels may not necessary translate well to the stage, let alone to the Big screen. 'Billy Liar' has achieved all that. I have just recently discovered this 'hidden' gem from among the throngs of DVD shelves. The reason I... Full review

I saw 'Billy Liar' on stage in London, with Albert Finney, no less, in the role of Billy Fisher. As good as Finney was (check out Frear's 'Gumshoe' for starters), in the role, Tom Courtney, is better. Finney was too... Full review

"Billy Liar!" impressed me more than many other admirable British pictures of this era, like "Room at the Top", "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" and "This Sporting Life". It managed to generate a more tangible blend of poignancy... Full review

What makes this little black and white film so absorbing? As I was watching it on late-night TV, I found myself on the edge of my seat, gripping the arms of my chair, trying not to yell at the main... Full review

concentrates mostly on intimate character drama;....It's a dumb song....She's very lucid admitting....now in retrospect seems even more perfectly cast.....Leonard Rossiter ( 2001: A Space Odyssey ) and Finlay Currie make an interesting pair of employers.... ... Full Review

Billy Liar ultimately has a sad undercurrent that is unshakeable Billy Liar is a unique work in the British New Cinema movement, but it was a harbinger of Schlesinger's long career as a director, centering stories around sympathetic oddballs and social misfits. ... Full Review

Billy Liar ultimately has a sad undercurrent that is unshakeable Billy Liar is a unique work in the British New Cinema movement, but it was a harbinger of Schlesinger's long career as a director, centering stories around sympathetic oddballs and social misfits. ... Full Review

Billy Liar is an absolutely delightful, thoroughly engaging, and sharply poignant comedy that still seems relevant and fresh today.....Just like Courtenay and the rest of this blessed, funny, delectable, touching movie.....Whatever the case, American audiences in 1963 missed out on one sparkling gem of movie.....Billy's fantasy sequences are inspired and often hilarious.....He dreams of being a writer.... ... Full Review

So even if Billy Liar had been bad So it's extraordinary that Billy Liar bucked the trend. But happily, Billy Liar remains a fine viewing experience, against all odds. ... Full Review

LONDON (AP) -- British writer Keith Waterhouse, a raconteur and wit whose works include the enduringly popular novel "Billy Liar," has died at the age of 80. ... Full Article

Waterhouse made his screenwriting debut on the 1961 film Whistle Down The Wind. But he remains best known for the 1959 novel Billy Liar - which was made into a critically acclaimed film starring Tom Courtenay in 1963. ... Full Article

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has awarded Bradford the world's first 'City of Film' prize, reports The Guardian . The West Yorkshire city has a long filmmaking history, with John Schlesinger's Billy Liar , Lionel Jeffries's... ... Full Article

Lord, I need to find/ someone who can heal my mind," Damon Albarn lamented on his crestfallen gem "Tender". The emotional, mostly thirty-something, 55,000-strong Hyde Park crowd lamented it right back at him. ... Full Article

NEVER afraid to tackle something different, this company can feel pleased with their first crack at the musical version of Billy Liar. Although there are a number of lively songs in the story, it scores heaviest on humour and the... ... Full Article

It is rising 59 years since George Godber first occupied a pivotal position in the running of the National Health Service. He was hand-picked by Sir Wilson Jameson, then Chief Medical Officer, to behis eventual successor but one and, in... ... Full Article