Samuel Love63 years on, John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar has lost none of its charm. The bittersweet portrait of youthful fantasy and frustrated ambition is elevated by an incredible lead performance from the great Sir Tom Courtenay, who gives the film its unforgettable energy and emotional core. Now, for the first time, this landmark of British cinema is available on 4K UHD, thanks to StudioCanal as part of their Vintage Classics line in a lavish Limited Edition set that contains a booklet, poster and calendar. Really wonderful stuff.
Synopsis
Tom Courtenay delivers a star-making turn as William Terrence Fisher (Billy Liar) in one of the most memorable and universally acclaimed films of the 60s. Running from an unsympathetic working-class family, a pair of demanding fiancées and an insecure job at an undertakers, Billy escapes, Walter Mitty-like, into a world of fantasy where he can realize his dream ambitions. As work and family pressures build to new intolerable levels, Liz (an early, charismatic turn from Julie Christie), enters his drab life and offers Billy the one real chance he’ll ever get to leave the past behind. Scripted by Keith Waterhouse from his own novel, and sensitively directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy), Billy Liar is one of the few comedies of the British ‘New Wave’, marrying visual and verbal wit with a rather poignant rumination on the futility of dreams.
Special Features
- Include 64-page booklet, poster and calendar
- NEW Billy Liar: Alice Lowe and Danny Leigh in Conversation
- NEW The Women of Billy Liar by Samira Ahmed
- Audio commentary with John Schlesinger, Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie
- Audio commentary by Kat Ellinger
- Remembering Billy Liar with Tom Courtenay and Helen Fraser
- Interview with Richard Ayode
- A look through the Keith Waterhouse Archive with British Library Curator Zoe Wilcox
- Interview with Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley
BILLY LIAR is available now on Limited Edition 4K UHD Blu-ray from StudioCanal
