Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4636 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-09-11
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Formats: Black & White, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 94 minutes

Synopsis
BILLY LIAR was an immediate sensation as first a novel, then a hit play--both written by Keith Waterhouse, who also served as screenwriter on the film. Director John Schlesinger's screen version was a British landmark in the fertile cinema of the late 1950s and early '60s, and launched the career of Julie Christie, who plays Liz, one of Billy's flames. A young Englishman named Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) dreams of escaping from his dull working-class family and his dead-end job as an undertaker's assistant. In constant conflict with his parents and with the many women with whom he is romantically involved (he is engaged to two), Billy regularly escapes into a rich fantasy world. Sometimes he imagines himself to be the powerful dictator of a small country. In another fantasy, he wants to become the scriptwriter for a popular comedian on television. Unfortunately, he often blurs the line between fantasy and reality, which is exactly the reason that everybody calls him 'Billy Liar'.

Customer Reviews

Great Movie
As a 18 year old when I first saw this,it convinced me that I was not nuts and that other people had their own fantasy worlds just like Billy's "Ambrosia".
In the days before franking machines, the stamp tin was the personal perquisite (perk) of the junior clerk of the office.
When Billy tries to hand in his notice at the Undertakers where he works, he is told that it will not be accepted until "the stamp book balances".
The piles of unposted Christmas calendards hidden in Billy's bedroom always bring back guilty memories for me!
Also, this movie caused me to fall in love with a young and impossibly beautiful Julie Christie.
A great piece of 1960's Northern life.
Buy and enjoy

The Best Film ever shot in Yorkshire
This is without doubt the greatest film ever filmed in Yorkshire - Bradford and a bit of Leeds ( and a short scene in Oxford Street). It has no faults, so rare for any film.

This was the film that made Julie Christie into a star, however she was not the first choice. The first Liz was played by Topsy Jane who became ill during the shoot and had to be replaced. Julie Christie was chosen because she was the first person they asked who was free to go to Bradford that week.

unrecognised classic
The film that first introduced Ms Julie Christie to our attention. I was 15 when I skipped a school cross country race to go and watch this in a local Cheltenham fleapit. My English teacher saw me leaving the cinema in the late afternoon and turned me into a sadistic headmaster who got his kicks giving me six hefty whacks in front of the school assembly next morning. Even today, I reckon is was a lot better than running over the muddy hills getting soaked. Now available on DVD this charming light comedy still makes me smile, I think a lot of us could see something of ourselves in Tom Courtnay's Billy Liar character, and how many fell in love with the bohemian Ms Christie? A film that I feel was very ahead of it's time given the usual fare of the British Film Industry during the early sixties.. Not expensive, buy it, a great addition to any serious collection.