Stars:
Tom Courtenay,
Julie Christie,
Wilfred Pickles,
Mona Washbourne,
Finlay Currie,
Rodney Bewes,
Leonard Rossiter,
Gwendolyn Watts,
Ethel Griffies
Director:
John Schlesinger
Summary: A young undertaker escapes from his mundane working-class life by entering a fantasy world where all his dream ambitions come true. As work, romance and family pressures build to almost intolerable levels, a young lady enters his drab life, offering the only chance he'll ever get to leave the past behind.
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'.