Billy Liar (1963)

Billy Liar I challenge anyone to watch this film without seeing himself or herself in our protagonist: Billy. Based off the play of the same title Billy Liar is set in post war, 60’s Britain. The world was an adapting place, the baby boom generation was reaching adolescence and young adulthood, cities and towns were replacing the old buildings with newer ones and there was huge political unrest. In the middle of this changing world Billy doesn’t exactly know what he wants from life, but he – like the love interest Liz – knows that to make it anywhere he has to leave his small town. He represents the fears of the previous generation and the attitudes of the new. Thanks to a dead end job and the destructive set of relationships Billy loses himself in his own made up world, causing him to get himself into even more bad situations. The films greatest achievement is making Billy hugely accessible to every audience, Schlesinger perfectly moulds Billy into the perfect hero and that Tom Courtenay’s eccentricity and acting skill allow him to create a character who may not always be hugely realistic but very easily will have you laughing out loud one scene and screaming at the screen in frustration the next. Courtenay is so relatable that the film forces you to think about the decisions you’d make in his situation. The film becomes more and more frustrating as he tells lie after lie, causing his own problems in the future, and although he swears he’ll be in London soon, in a job he hasn’t got, the lies and the stories he’s told in the past catch up to him making him his own worst enemy. A recommendation to anyone of any age, this film is nostalgic, hopeful and even somewhat absurd. A brilliant bit of British film making it once again proves that to make truly amusing and worthwhile films you don’t have to be brutally violent or base it on tragic historical events. Instead you must spend time and effort investing into interesting and relatable characters and then the audience will invest into you.