He sees a better life in front of him, but finds himself locked in a world of daydreaming, imagining himself as a beloved military leader of the fictional country of Ambrosia, or as an imprisoned writer fighting a heroic battle for human rights. His dreams distract him from the web of lies he has constructed over a matter of 250 stolen calendars and his proposals of marriage to two local girls.
Courtenay portrays Billy with both a quiet despair and an energetic eccentricity that give the film a positive energy. When, in the last half hour of the film, he meets up with his old school friend Liz (Julie Christie, in a mesmerising debut), who reflects his sense of whimsy with her own determination to escape to a better life, he seems to have found a way out.
Billy Liar was one of the first of a wave of British kitchen-sink dramas from the 1960s that included Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Kes.
It was groundbreaking in its sympathetic yet uncompromising portrayal of its lead character and the pressures of conformity and growing into the responsibilities of adulthood and career. As such, it is a valuable film for those working with young people in that it helps them understand these pressures and how we are stirred to deal with them. The great pleasure to be had from this film is its mirroring of our own challenges of balancing our dreams with our real-life responsibilities. It is the sheer joy of the performances and the lasting feeling of optimism emerging from monotony that make it stand out as classic cinema.
Reviewed by Toby Jones, sub-editor at The National Youth Agency.
