Original subtitles

The following programme contains outdated attitudes,

language and cultural depictions which may cause offence.

BILLY: 'It was a big day for us.

We had won the war in Ambrosia,

democracy was back once more in our beloved country.'

(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC)

In one of the finest performances in British cinema,

Tom Courtenay fills the young hero of Billy Liar with angst,

yearning and delusion.

Billy Fisher has big dreams...

if only reality didn't keep getting in the way.

(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC) (CHEERING)

Directed by John Schlesinger in 1963,

and based on the best-selling novel by Keith Waterhouse,

Billy Liar is one of the signature films of the British New Wave -

that dynamic naturalism that grabbed all the headlines in the early '60s.

Infused with anger and wit,

this cinematic movement captured the struggle

of a disillusioned generation to break free from tradition.

It transcended the British New Wave, didn't it?

And, although it wasn't hugely successful at the time,

has become iconic.

It’s so important in terms of what happens next

that it’s still being used, perhaps unconsciously, now.

Though that fusion of the tricks of the French New Wave,

which were a little bit too extreme to directly import into, you know,

Hollywood or British television and cinema,

this is the film that distils that art into a useable form.

Do you hear me? Bloody well get up.

(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC) (CHEERING)

Billy lives at home in a sullen Yorkshire town.

He works in a funeral parlour, and is engaged to two girls,

though loves neither.

In his head, he is a misunderstood artist, novelist,

a scriptwriter, or the composer of pop songs.

When Keith Waterhouse sat down to write Billy Liar,

there is absolutely no doubt he was reminiscing about his own...

early life, teenage years.

He had left school at the age of 15, without any qualifications,

and went to work in an estate agent's,

which doubled as a funeral parlour.

Now, how that works, I don't know,

but he clearly had a fairly sort of strange

and rather humdrum early working period.

He then, of course, left and went into the RAF.

And when he came out of that, he decided that he wanted to write.

NEWSREEL: Some of the British people still live in quiet country towns,

centuries old... others live in the crowded mining towns.

But the large number live in the cities,

some in neighbourhoods of neat suburban homes...

...and some... in bleak slum areas.

Today, they form a nation of more than 50 million people.

Most of them live in England and Wales.

And about four out of five of them live in towns and cities.

There are seven cities of over a million people,

all of them in Britain.

Keith Waterhouse was born in Leeds,

which I think really bleeds through in the novel of Billy Liar.

Even though that is set in a fictional Yorkshire town...

there's this sense of being kind of stifled and trapped by convention,

and by these people living in the same patterns,

and ways, that they always had, that their grandparents had.

There's a sense that for young people, there's...

not really a lot of future in these towns.

And... as a journalist and as a writer,

he would end up becoming a part of the...

the generation of what would later be known as the Angry Young Man -

playwrights, novelists, and writers, like John Osborne and so forth,

who'd take a look at British society at this crucial transitional phase.

Billy Liar is, in a sense,

the story of Keith Waterhouse writing the novel Billy Liar.

Born in Leeds, the son of a fruit and veg seller,

Waterhouse achieved his dream of becoming a writer -

first as a reporter, then as a novelist,

playwright and a screenwriter.

Inspired by Mark Twain and PG Wodehouse,

he developed a brand of caustic British satire.

Ironically, Billy's failings made Waterhouse famous.

How autobiographical...

was Keith Waterhouse's original novel of Billy Liar?

Well, in Keith Waterhouse's unpublished papers,

the British Museum discovered an autobiography he never published,

called How To Survive Until 22, which he wrote when he was 22...

in which he describes his own fantasy kingdoms,

and his own concerns about the big wide world,

and about leaving the North, and all of the...

features of Billy Liar's life.

So I think he's... he was very much Billy Liar's character.

He had a lot of the same concerns,

a lot of the same fantasy lives within him,

but he was the Billy Liar who at the end of the story,

he got on the train and he went to London, and he worked his way up.

I mean, he wrote Billy Liar ten years later,

after the... his autobiography.

He was actually writing in between doing things.

He was writing short stories from the age of about 16,

not doing anything with them.

But he knew very early on, possibly because of his background -

his father had died when he was four and he was one of five children -

and they were very poor.

According to him, they were, like, impossibly poor.

So when he came out of the RAF,

his mother, amazingly, encouraged him to continue writing,

and he... he did -

he got on to the local paper, The Yorkshire Post.

He was a very adroit journalist.

He had always, apart from wanting to write fiction,

he had always wanted to be in newspapers,

so I think he was sort of slightly seduced by...

the possible glamour of them,

the seedy glamour of newspapers as it was.

And from there, he succeeded very well.

He came to London, and he became, ultimately,

a columnist first for the Daily Mirror, and then the Daily Mail.

And in between that time, he never ever stopped writing everything.

He wrote short stories, he wrote novels, he wrote plays.

He wrote screenplays, and he was...

you know, he was an all-round fine writer.

He could turn his hand to anything.

(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC) (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

Battalion, by the left, salute!

To escape his grim predicament,

he even imagines an entire fictional country, Ambrosia,

which he rules like a tyrant -

daydreams brought to comical life on screen.

But his tapestry of lies is finally about to unravel.

Also featuring a dazzling Julie Christie,

Schlesinger's film is a bittersweet marvel,

a comedy of tragic proportions, a despairing psychological enquiry,

and a telling portrait of a moment in time.

Billy Liar is the film Billy would have dreamt of making.

Well, of course, Waterhouse came from Leeds and...

wanted to be a writer, had artistic aspirations,

and must have shared many of Billy's frustrations, you know?

Yes, and also, he was very much a dreamer,

in that once he arrives in London,

he starts to fantasise again about the world of...

what happens if I write a novel, what happens if I write a play?

And he explodes out into London's Theatreland.

In his published autobiography,

he talks a lot about the moment that he joins,

finally, the creative elite and what that feels like to him.

And how that's his sense that he's achieved some...

the momentum has died down,

and he's arrived in the places that he needs to be.

So he... And he also talks about how his friends in Leeds couldn't...

believe that he had actually done it.

There's a sense that he was... he was mocked almost,

and I guess that's sort of the other Billy Liar thing -

he was slightly mocked for his ambitions to be a London...

society character, which he achieved in the end.

In 1959, the UK is coming out of a period of austerity,

and just starting to, you know...

the public are taking an interest in consumer goods.

The musical scene is changing, the social scene is changing.

We haven't reached the point that we're thinking of Swinging London,

in the height of the '60s.

Much of the country, and much of the UK,

are still very much living in the patterns,

and the homes, and the ways of austerity.

They are still, you know, living in...

terraced houses with their parents,

relatively traditional people...

outside of, perhaps, some very trendy pockets of London.

And so there's this sort of inkling towards change,

but it's still kind of on the cusp.

In 1959, he wrote Billy Liar. It was a short novel.

And very, very quickly, it caught on. People loved it.

Basically because it described a life of a boy

that many could identify with -

someone frustrated in a humdrum province in a job,

dreaming of London.

Dreaming of the mecca where the swinging '60s,

if they weren't actually swinging then, were about to.

(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC)

WOMAN: Billy! Your boiled egg's stone cold!(MUSIC STOPS)

(METALLIC BANGING)

Well, come on, then! It's nearly half past nine.

I'll not tell you again!

All right, I'm coming.

BILLY: 'Yes.

Today's the day...

I make decisions.'

Don't go making fresh tea for him.

You've enough to do without cooking six breakfasts every morning.

That was a blacky postman just went past the window.

They're all darkies now.

There's blacky bus conductors...

and blacky nurses.

They can't get work, you know, in South Africa.

(GRUNTS) Go on, ignorant. Knock her over.

(POSH ACCENT) A cabinet change is imminent, I see.

You'll be imminent, you don't start getting up in the morning.

Good morning, Father. Come on, get on with it, lad.

You're half an hour late for work already.

Good morning, Mater. How are you, darling?

The British New Wave blended the kitchen-sink realism

of playwrights such as John Osborne and Alan Sillitoe

with the adventure of the French New Wave.

Unglamorous lives and locations were depicted

both with documentary frankness and visual spontaneity.

Led by Room At The Top, Look Back In Anger

and Saturday Night And Sunday Morning,

these films stormed the gates of convention.

Billy Liar was even more daring,

being set inside the head of an Angry Young Man.

The British New Wave sort of evolved out of...

...a bunch of directors...

Lindsay Anderson primarily,

who started something called the Free Cinema movement.

He wanted to, basically, break open...

the class-ridden structure of cinema at that stage,

as he saw it, not only internally, but externally.

So instead of having posh actors and people who were well off,

and making films about posh actors, about posh people,

he wanted to have a new realism.

He wanted to get to the nitty-gritty of real life in Britain.

It was the perfect time to do it, of course, and...

he wanted to follow what had happened in the theatre...

with people like Osborne, with Angry Young Men,

the new sort of... the new wave of realism in the theatre -

but to take that into the level,

and the discipline, of cinema.

Go around the country.

Go to the industrial towns, or go to the farms...

and you will see such a state of prosperity

as we have never had in my lifetime...

...nor indeed ever in the history of this country.(APPLAUSE)

What is beginning to worry some of us...

is just this - especially some of the older ones of us...

...who remembers the old...

...it's this - is it too good to be true?

Or perhaps I should say...

is it too good to last?

The book is published in 1959,

and the film came out in 1963.

Are they different Britains that is portrayed in each?

They are slightly different. In a way, 1959 sets up 1963.

In the late '50s, the Conservative government loosened credit controls.

You had store cards, which allowed people to begin to buy...

things that they couldn't quite afford,

the beginning of the consumer society in the UK.

It's the beginning of the consumer boom.

Wages are high, unemployment is low,

and society is starting to change.

And by the time you reach 1963, this is really flourishing.

The film is shot in Bradford,

and you can see this enormous town centre redevelopment

taking place while they're shooting.

They're knocking down old Bradford,

and John Schlesinger, in his documentarian style,

catches the destruction of the centre of Bradford

to build these massive shopping centres

that would become the future of consumerism.

So... But that really began with this loosening up

of the ability to take part in the consumer culture

that in 1958, 1959, began.

And do you get a sense that...

this consumerism is part of what is fuelling Billy's aspirations?

Yes, I think that Billy's aspirations, in particular,

the way... well, first of all, the way that he...

perceives his success as a novelist through financial terms and adverts.

I mean, you know, the idea that he would begin to write...

There's one scene where he sits and writes the first line of his novel.

And then he starts to imagine the moment that he walks out of prison,

for various reasons, and sees the advert for the novel...

on the billboard.

(UPLIFTING MUSIC) (CHATTER)

The novel was initially adapted for the stage,

with Albert Finney taking the part of Billy to great acclaim.

Waterhouse contributed to all the adaptations, co-writing the play,

and the screenplay for the film, with Willis Hall,

as well as the musical and sitcom versions which followed.

Tom Courtenay had replaced Finney on the stage,

but always felt in his shadow,

an insecurity which, in fact, made him ideal for the part.

Keith Waterhouse wrote the novel in 1959.

It was a success, and would go on to the stage.

The director, Lindsay Anderson, actually...

made the original stage production,

and it is sort of interesting that he is another one

of the kind of leading lights of the British New Wave.

But the original stage production starred Albert Finney,

another one of the great stars of that period,

from Saturday Night And Sunday Morning the following year, in 1960.

And that was not the Billy Liar that would end up on the screen -

that would be someone who was originally his understudy,

Tom Courtenay, who eventually took on the role from Finney,

and was the one who John Schlesinger,

the director of Billy Liar, would see on stage and respond to most.

Rising out of the BBC, John Schlesinger had formed

a working relationship with Waterhouse on their adaptation

of Stan Barstow's A Kind Of Loving.

It simply followed that he would be the man

to translate Billy Liar to the big screen.

More romantic than his New Wave peers,

he would go on to win an Oscar for Midnight Cowboy.

Schlesinger had a thing for dreamers.

I think what's fascinating about John Schlesinger's style

is that..he doesn't owe anything to anybody else.

I mean, you know, he may have...

...absorbed other techniques and images,

and the way of doing things, but what he produces is...

possibly unique, because he somehow manages...

not only to get a sense of absolute reality -

I mean, right, real, nitty-gritty reality.

For example, you know, when he shoots...

the arrival of Julie Christie, walking through...

Bradford City Centre, he is doing that on the hoof.

It's exactly the sort of thing he did in Midnight Cowboy.

He takes his cameras out onto the streets -

probably doesn't tell anybody, gets a few permissions here and there.

But the people who are gawping at Julie Christie

as she is sort of swinging past, almost dancing down the street -

they're real people.

They're real people and have real reactions, you know?

They can't believe... 'What's going on? It's...'

So he's very good at that, but he has absolutely no problem at all

changing gear...

into Billy's fantasy world.

In fact, it starts almost in the opening scene,

when he's lying in bed,

when he imagines himself in his own invented kingdom of Ambrosia.

Schlesinger preferred Courtenay, because, as the actor deduced,

he was altogether more dainty than Finney.

Courtenay was closer to the book's diffident Northern boy.

Born in Hull, the son of a boat painter,

he had escaped to the London stage.

Courtenay understood Billy's sense of suffocation,

and with his flat, Northern vowels,

he could undercut the character's delusions of grandeur.

Courtenay later said that he felt that it was his physical appearance,

and his physical difference from Albert Finney,

that made him more appealing for a screen version of Billy Liar.

Cos he was a lot skinnier, and a little bit more unprepossessing

by comparison to Finney, who was a bit burlier,

a bit more traditionally masculine.

I think for the character of Billy, who is quite, you know,

emotionally immature, and, you know...

is sympathetic to a point, but is also a bit cowardly at times,

I think his sort of physical skinniness...

sort of does something in terms of...

the visual signifying of the character.

The play was... Onstage, it was basically a reconstruction of...

Billy's house - it was three rooms in the house.

So the whole of the action of the play had to take place in the house,

which cuts out a lot of the potential for...

the fantasy world to exist beyond his mind.

You know, you can't stage the kind of ideas that emerge in the film -

you have to talk them through. So...

in fact, the play wasn't enormously successful.

Albert Finney, who played Billy Liar at the beginning,

had turned down appearing in Lawrence Of Arabia...

to be in Billy Liar, which...

may have seemed a bad idea, as the play was a slow start, but then...

his career was just taking off.

But it didn't really take off until the film Saturday Night And Sunday Morning came out,

just in the middle of the play's run, and this gave the play an enormous boost.

Albert Finney's stardom became immense.

And he left the play, so they hired Tom Courtenay to take over the role.

And I think, interestingly,

Keith Waterhouse later wrote about this

and talked about how the energy of Albert Finney as the star,

once he actually became a star, the energy of him being Billy Liar,

was not as convincing as Tom Courtenay,

who turned up the wannabe star.

And that's how he saw Billy, as the wannabe.

So it only works in the sense...

The role only worked if it was played by someone who isn't famous.

I think Finney would have been...

he may have been great onstage - I don't know, I didn't see it.

But he would have been wrong on film because he's too robust.

He's too... He's too big a character.

The thing that Tom Courtenay has is that he can be furtive.

You know, he's furtive. He's trying... He is a liar.

You know, he literally is a liar.

But also that he has a kind of sense of mischief about him.

And...

he's perfect for Billy Liar, as, indeed,

he was for The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner,

which was the film he made before.

And so it was a natural transition...

for him to take on this role, and...

you know, it gave him the opportunity of a lifetime.

Because, you know... this film made so many of the actors in it,

because they were so perfectly cast.

Either you get me that rotten ring back by this afternoon... Must dash.

...or I'm coming to see your rotten mother and rotten - father. - Lot of work to finish.

And your rotten grandmother.

We're supposed to be engaged, if you did but know it!

(INAUDIBLE SPEECH)

(STIRRING ROMANTIC MUSIC)

Billy! Are you feeling all right?

Of course, darling, why?

The film's central complex idea is that we enter Billy's dreams

of transcending his humdrum surroundings,

living at home, working in a funeral parlour.

He is fooling everyone that he is going to make it as a scriptwriter,

but mainly fooling himself.

Billy is unable to face reality,

assembling a web of lies to maintain his self-delusion.

Lying is the most creative thing he does.

I think the nature of the fantasies, and the dream sequences,

are very interesting, first of all,

because of the way Schlesinger cuts to them quite abruptly...

and sort of almost places them in the everyday and in the tedious,

to the point you almost have to do a double-take as an audience member.

Which is both very comically effective in terms of the humour,

but also is just, you know, startling.

And it does make you go, 'Oh, wait. OK, this is a fantasy now.'

And sometimes, that's very obvious because...

he's imagining being the leader of a foreign country,

a made-up foreign country, or...

you know, some sort of heroic, dashing aristocrat.

But other times, it's a little bit more unclear

as to his... you know, his fantasy.

Tom Courtenay is absolutely mercurial in Billy Liar,

not just because he can play the role of the teenager...

who's dreaming the thing,

but because he does a whole lot of other things as well.

He is a putative entertainer.

He and his best friend, Arthur,

are a sort of double act in the funeral parlour.

And they clearly have worked together in one way or another,

if they haven't... they have written together, but they...

there's a suggestion that they've actually performed together onstage

as a sort of a comedy duo.

This is not clear in the film - it actually is in the book.

But it doesn't really matter,

because they're sort of constantly trading quips or lines or gags.

And... not only that, but...

Courtenay has an extraordinary sense of mimicry as well.

He's using his physicality, and his voice,

as an outlet for his creative impulses,

in a manner of a child, actually.

In a way, film was the perfect medium for the story, wasn't it?

Because there was more potential in...

doing that most uncinematic of things,

of getting inside Billy's head, visually.

Yes. Not only did film...

be the perfect medium, but film, at that time, was the perfect medium.

There are some tricks that John Schlesinger uses

which probably would not have been used previously.

There's some wonderful moments where Billy is furious with people.

And there's a very quick jump-cut to him machine-gunning the room.

It's... Now, that, I think, is...

There are these much more elaborate Ambrosia sequences

where he's fantasising about himself

as the dictator of this fictional country.

But I love the way he will briefly,

very rapidly, just imagine he's shot everyone in the room.

Or these quick moments where you're allowed into his mind, and...

his anger is portrayed visually rather than just...

you know, the voice or the face.

They have this kind of surreal allowance for him to...

enter this insane state, really,

of rage, briefly, and then carry on normally.

So the film allows them to explore all sorts of imagery

that I think neither the book nor the theatre could.

I've been to the doctor's. You've been to the doctor's?

I've been to the doctor's. Can you tell these good people why you've been to the doctor's?

I don't like the look of my wife. I wish I had come with you.

I hate the sight of mine. (IMITATES CHEERING) Ha-ha-ha.

Haven't you people got any work to do?

BOTH: Yes, Mr Shadrack. Trying to run an up-to-date organisation here, you know?

There's too much laxity. Far too much laxity.

Stamp, I would like to see your ashes list.

The entire cast captures the moods of the film to perfection.

Wilfred Pickles is so trenchant as Billy's despairing father

in the famous 'grateful' speech...

that cuts to the quick of his son's state of mind.

Helen Fraser and Gwendolyn Watts...

find pathos as his equally deluded fiancees,

while Rodney Bewes and Leonard Rossiter...

would go on to homage Billy's forlorn aspirations in their sitcoms -

The Likely Lads and The Life And Times Of Reginald Perrin.

So there are a number of people in the ensemble cast,

in supporting roles - people like Leonard Rossiter,

people like Wilfred Pickles as Billy's father -

who represent the old guard, I guess, so to speak.

And very much Yorkshire life.

And you could say there is an element of...

kind of jokey caricature to them, partly because it is a comedy,

so the idea is to have a laugh,

and for these characters to be a little bit broad.

But these are really talented actors that bring...

something else to the part, as well.

They have strongly held beliefs.

They believe in a certain way of living,

and they are, you know, frustrated at every turn with...

Billy's refusal to get on the straight and narrow, so to speak,

or to abide by their way of...

you know, their idea of what a man should be, really.

And so there's this generational divide that happens.

John Schlesinger was a born-and-bred,

quite well-off, Londoner,

so it is kind of interesting to see his approach to...

and maybe there is a little bit of broadness to his...

depiction of small-town Yorkshire life, because he is an outsider.

You mean Liz? MAN: Yes, where's she been this time?

I don't know, she goes where she feels like. She's crazy.

She just enjoys herself. But what does she do?

All sorts - waitress, typist. She worked at Butlin's last year.

She works until she gets fed up, then she goes somewhere else.

She's been all over. (VOCALISING)

(JAZZY MUSIC)

Julie Christie's entrance into the film

could have been directed by Goddard.

She almost floats through the bustling streets,

carefree, certain of herself.

As Liz, Christie is an alluring vision of the future,

offering Billy a romantic lifeline.

But here's a thought — could Julie Christie's Liz,

this beacon of modernity and cool,

be another one of Billy's fantasies?

Now, I look at Billy Liar, and I adore Billy Liar,

because it isn't quite like the other British New Wave films to me.

There is something more flamboyant, more...

there's more visual flair in it.

Do you think it's more influenced by the French New Wave?

Yes, I would say, cos the French New Wave had a lot of the ideas...

of social realism that the British New Wave had,

but it also had this very playful,

surrealistic jump-cut style.

It would quite often flash into...

entirely imagined sequences or strange dance routines.

If you think about a film like Breathless in 1960,

because of the way the film was cut,

there would be suddenly vast jumps in time or, you know,

completely different changes in perspective.

And so the director, John Schlesinger,

adopted a lot of that ability to suddenly jump into a scene

where there might be a machine-gun used,

or there might be a fantasy used. Or...

Or in the case of the arrival of certain characters,

like Julie Christie as Liz, suddenly put a character into the film

who appears to be in an entirely different film,

and whose route into the movie is a completely different sequence.

It is as if she's in a 1963 film as opposed to a 1959 story.

So he is... Really, in a way, he's bridging between...

the British New Wave and British cinema that was to come.

He will open up allowing for films like A Hard Day's Night,

and this is about the time that James Bond starts to come through.

These ideas of... Much, much bigger ideas.

Much, much bigger depictions of grand-scale things,

which suddenly cut back to your...

at home by the kitchen, dealing with real life.

It's a really imaginative, I think, incredibly influential,

stand-alone film, really - there was nothing else like it at the time.

The exteriors were crucial.

Billy's provincial home is never named in the film,

but this Northern town, on the cusp of change,

was filmed on the streets of Bradford.

We catch glimpses of old bomb sites and buildings being levelled.

A new Britain is on its way,

of branded high streets and office blocks.

Symbolically, Billy is constantly framed against Victorian railings,

and old brickwork,

while Liz is pictured against...

construction, progress and opportunity.

And what's fascinating about the social environment

in which Billy Liar is operating

is, of course, that he's a teenager,

so his parents, and most of the older people around him,

would actually have been through the war.

And this is the time when, you know,

the word 'teenager' first sort of arrived.

And so...

there is... First of all, he's surrounded by characters

who are not just...

older than him - an older generation -

but actually throwbacks to almost an Edwardian, possibly Victorian time.

Leonard Rossiter, as the...

funeral parlour owner, is just very, very funny.

He could have come out of Dickens.

The same with Finlay Currie,

who is the sort of grand boss of the funeral parlour.

I mean he... You associate Finlay Currie with Dickens,

naturally, of course, because of the David Lean films,

but they are big, old, so they dress in very old-fashioned ways.

They have a kind of manner, and a way of speaking,

which is rather more fastidious than...

and correct, than you know, the modern generation.

And modern being, you know, late 1950s.

And it comes to its full fruition,

this sort of generational chasm - it's not a gap, it's a chasm -

in the final confrontation between him and his father,

played absolutely brilliantly by Wilfred Pickles.

When... He says, 'I'm leaving. I'm going to London,'

and his father says, 'No, you're not. You're staying here.'

You're going to carry on the business that he has,

which is a sort of... interior decorating, something like that.

But he says, you know, 'You don't know what you're doing.

You're a dreamer, you're lazy.'

And he's bringing into his arguments...

...all the things that he has learnt and suffered in the past -

that you have to buckle down, you have to work,

you have to, you know, pay your dues.

You can't go swanning off. You have to be loyal.

You cannot lie, and all of these things, he sees in his son.

He's really afraid for his son.

I'm not arguing about it, Dad, I'm going.

Go, then, I'm finished with you.

And don't think you're gonna take my suitcase with you, either.

While a celebrated example of the British New Wave,

Billy Liar also goes its own way.

Schlesinger elevates the docudrama of contemporaries,

such as Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson,

with flashes of his own imagination,

including noir-like angles, jump-cuts,

voiceover, and a camera as restless as Billy's thoughts.

It's as if to say film is a form of dreaming.

Unfortunately, the film...

received a pretty muted response at the box office.

It didn't do fabulously well commercially,

and people... you know, commentators said, later on,

that people just probably were a bit confused by it,

or felt that it was so dark.

Then years later, of course, it became this classic,

and I think rightfully recognised as a classic.

(OOHING)

It's all happened! (APPLAUSE)

That's it. Smile at the camera! MAN: Ready, girls?

(ALL PLAYING 'SCOTLAND THE BRAVE')

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(OVERLAPPING CHATTER)

(ON PA) But this I pledge...

battalions of craftsmen will change the face of our cities...

...we will build towers!

Towers!

No less.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

Schlesinger is attempting that hardest of cinematic tricks -

visualising the interior life of a character.

He allows Billy's fantasising to invade the reality of the film...

to the point where we are unsure of that reality.

Yet Schlesinger is tapping into something universal -

the fact that we all fantasise about a better life.

It's very interesting, this invented country of Billy's, Ambrosia.

He eventually ends up...

You know, he's a freedom fighter, and he's a war hero,

and he plays all these incredible roles within this world -

a very cinematic, kind of Hollywood-esque imagining

of his part to play in this imaginary country.

But the really interesting thing, I think,

is when he imagines himself doing these kind of dictatorial,

almost fascist-style speeches,

where he's shouting at assorted crowds

to great response and positive response.

And maybe it's a tenuous thing to say,

but I do think, although Billy is a sympathetic character in the main,

it's a very, very wise connection to be made all those years ago,

which still feels very relevant now,

which is that a young man who's frustrated,

who feels like a loser, who has nowhere to go,

wants to shore up his sense of masculinity

by feeling that he's a part of something.

Feeling macho, feeling that bravado.

People like that tend to be attracted to the right wing,

and, you know, that's borne itself out.

Billy Liar is a comedy in a sense...

in the same sense that Chekov wrote comedies.

It's bittersweet. It has funny moments.

But at the end of the day, there is an underlying... tragedy.

Even if nobody actually dies, there is an underlying tragic momentum.

The idea of Billy yearning to go to London...

...you know, where it's all happening, where he can be creative,

where he can be free, he can be liberated from his parents,

he can find girls willing to go to bed with him -

you know, all that sort of fantasy,

it's not that far away from Masha dreaming of Moscow in Three Sisters.

You know, 'Ah, I want to go to Moscow. I want to go to...'

You know, very well, that they're never gonna get there.

And that, of course, is the... that's the core -

that sort of...

the nugget of what you hope will happen,

and yet, in your heart, know is not going to happen.

And that's what keeps you sort of buoyed throughout the movie,

watching a man...

struggle against his own fears, his own...

You know, he's very imaginative. He has got an imagination.

And it is not very clear in the film -

it's more clear in the book, funnily enough -

but he actually can write.

I mean, the only indication in the film is that he wrote a...

what looked like quite a good song with his friend Arthur,

Rodney Bewes, called Twisterella, which is played...

at the Locarno ballroom when they go there.

Everybody's dancing - every generation, of course -

which is very interesting, and they...

he says, 'Oh, they're playing our song.'

And, you know, the first time, you can pass that by,

but actually, that is...

that's the only significant moment when you think,

'Oh, he actually did something, and it came out,

and it was a success on its own terms.'

And that gives you a tiny, tiny little spark...

of hope that maybe he could do something.

That he could be successful - that he's not an utter loser.

Of course, things don't turn out quite that way,

but it's a nice little moment, that.

Echoing the history of valiant failures in British culture,

from Dickens to Ealing, Billy Liar held up a mirror to its audience,

maybe even stirred them into action.

Its bitterly funny enquiry into the need for artistic expression

transformed this whimsical also-ran to a cultural icon.

The British New Wave paved the way for the Swinging Sixties.

Billy has no idea, but everything he dreamed of...

is just around the corner.

Billy Liar is something which is referenced a lot,

culturally, even in music.

So bands like The Smiths have referenced the film.

Morrissey is a big cinephile, so he often leans into old films,

particularly old British films, for his inspiration.

And beyond that, there are a lot of contemporary filmmakers

that pay homage to Schlesinger and to this film.

Richard Ayoade's film Submarine was a good example of that,

and, I think, in the more general sense,

you know, not being afraid to inject very dark humour into proceedings,

even if the film's final takeaway...

was, you know... is serious, or about social issues.

Very good melding of the serious and the humorous.

And, of course, another legacy of Billy Liar

is in the fact that the British television sitcom...

would take on that sort of thwarted ambition.

I think of Rodney Bewes, who's in Billy Liar,

who is in The Likely Lads, which could be his character's story.

And then Leonard Rossiter in The Life And Death Of Reginald Perrin -

you know, a great song to the idea of crushed ideals.

It becomes a British theme.

Well, the British sitcom character...

One of the differences between the American sitcom star

and the British sitcom star is that the British sitcom star...

has ambitions and dreams about changing their situation,

which are never fulfilled - Steptoe And Son, Fawlty Towers.

The Office. You find those characters.

It is always the lead of those films is someone who dreams...

but doesn't succeed - they are all Billy Liar.

Billy Liar sets up this comedic type

that we then return to again and again and again,

particularly in television, because...

And a sitcom is the ideal form for this because the sitcom...

at the end, they're reset, and this is...

If you like, that's the thing about Billy Liar,

is at the end, he resets and starts again.

And that's what the sitcom does, is it takes Billy Liar...

There was, indeed, actually a sitcom called Billy Liar,

which was not as successful, but there's the character who wants...

wants, wants, fails, returns, starts again.

And they just go in this hamster wheel of non-achievement,

and so it does create a whole genre.

The film's lasting power is that it extends a portrait of Northern life

into a metaphor for a changing Britain.

Billy can be read as a symbol for a country

caught between crumbling tradition and an exciting future.

He is trapped between the deathly hold of the funeral parlour

and a train ride to the stuff of dreams,

represented by Christie - herself on the verge of becoming an icon.

Her next film would be Schlesinger's Darling.

(TUNEFUL WHISTLING)

Hello. I had to walk.

Oh, never mind. Do you good.

Now, I have a theory about Liz and Julie Christie.

Given the way John Schlesinger makes the film,

the dividing line between what Billy imagines

and what is the reality of the film gets increasingly hard to judge.

And Liz is so extraordinarily modern, and cool,

and the answer to all his dilemmas.

She's the only person in the film who understands him.

I wonder whether she is, in fact, another of his fantasies?

Well, that's an interesting idea. I think... I think that there's...

I mean, we could talk a lot about Liz.

I think she's one of the most interesting characters in the film.

The way that he...

The way John Schlesinger shoots her is very different to the book.

She's a very different character, and she's very much...

of the '60s in the film.

I can see what you're saying there.

I've always thought of her, to some degree,

as being a Lucifer-style figure in that she tempts him...

with the possibility of achieving his dream.

So she arrives at a particular point of crisis,

and she says to him, 'Well, all of the things you want are possible.

Everything - it's all achievable.

Come with me. Come with me to London.

And we will achieve all those things if you give me your soul.'

The ending of Billy Liar is a pivotal moment in British cinema.

We can only watch on in agony as Billy allows the London train,

Julie Christie, and the future, to leave without him.

The film haunts us with the question of why Billy stays behind.

The most profound message of Billy Liar...

is that he cannot escape himself.

(FAINT TRIUMPHANT MUSIC)

(MUSIC BUILDS)

('AMBROSIA' FROM THE MUSICAL 'BILLY' PLAYS)

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