BILLY LIAR (81)

Directed by: John Schlesinger (1963)

Starring: Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne

The Pitch: A young man in the North of England regularly escapes his oppressive surroundings into a world of fantasy.

Theo Sez: Those behind the current British renaissance (TRAINSPOTTING, HUMAN TRAFFIC et al.) should be forced to watch this wonderful, "Walter Mitty"-inspired high-point from an earlier flowering till they've learned its lessons - though they'll no doubt call it reactionary, seeing as it basically tells youthful energy to grow the hell up and start facing up to its responsibilities. Still, at least it's better than patting it on the back the way those complacent 90s movies do, and the film does actually manage to have it both ways : Billy's subversive razzing of the middle-aged, middle-class world around him is superbly (and hilariously) done, but the older generation aren't just clueless foils - they're on to him, but they let him get away with it (just a phase, he'll grow out of it). He is in fact a terribly ambivalent hero - smart and funny and alive, but also a dreamer and procrastinator, not as clever as he thinks he is ; what's great about the film is how it seduces you into rooting for Billy to leave his dead-end town for the big city, then makes you realise he'd only be escaping yet again, like he does with his daydreams - makes you realise that he needs to come of age, one way or the other. The whole thing exists in a kind of limbo, perched between the old and the new, set in a drab Northern town in the process of transition, pre-War buildings being torn down to make way for supermarkets : it's a seminal early-60s British movie, looking back to the kitchen-sink realism of SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING (or Schlesinger's own A KIND OF LOVING, from the year before) but also anticipating the wacky Swinging London comedy of A HARD DAY'S NIGHT or THE KNACK (where the older generation are clueless foils). Valuable and historically fascinating ; also sharp, wise, well-observed, delicately acted - and seriously funny.