Hi Aki,
Today I finished Billy Liar a movie I recorded, and watched about an hour friday, 20 minutes yesterday, the end today.
This was a play. Then it was a movie. Then it was a TV show. The writers really hit the jackpot with this one. John Schlesinger directed.
The story is set in a small town in northern england, early 60s. Billy (Albert Finney in the play version, then Tom Courtenay took over the role in the play, then Courtenay played in the movie) is a young man with big dreams. We open with a radio show just going on-air at 6 am. The host begins what he usually does: read letters and dedications that listeners have sent in.
As we continue to hear the radio show and the many dedications, we see exterior shots of houses, apartment buildings, all over town, as happy housewives react when their letters are read. These are all extreme long shots (the film was shot Panavision, black and white) from the street; the women are far away. Finally we end on a closer shot of a woman (Mona Washbourne playing Billy’s mom) behind a window. We go inside with her. she’s wondering when the radio show will ever get around to reading her letter and playing her record. The Mum, Dad, and Mum’s Mum are all around the breakfast table getting ready for the day. They occasionally shout upstairs to son Billy to come down and have breakfast or he’ll be late for work.
Billy, meanwhile, lies in bed, daydreaming of Ambrosia, the country he imagines. Ambrosia has just won the Great War, for peace and freedom and independence. We see Billy as the general who won the war, as the wounded leader of a wounded squadron, as one of the women recruits … all marching in parade before the general-king of Ambrosia (also, of course, Billy).
Billy at last goes down stairs, half an hour late. He gets in a fight with his Dad and Mum, his Dad especially attacks him constantly and in one flight of fancy Billy turns, now in uniform, and guns them all down with submachine gun (a recurring motif Billy imagines whenever somebody is giving him too much grief).
Another point of contention is the wardrobe in Billy’s room. His Mum wants to clean it, she wants him to unlock it, and why does he want to keep it locked for, anyway? When Billy goes up to get ready for work, he unlocks it, and we find out why: inside it are 200 or so calendars from his workplace, a funeral home. Billy was supposed to mail them out. Instead he spent the postage money himself, and now is stuck with all these calendars and no idea what to do with them other than hide them in his wardrobe!
Billy goes on to work (late, and yelled at for it) and along the way he indulges in some more fantasies. He imagines being caught for pilfering the postage money; thrown in prison, he dashes off an exposé on prison life that turns into a major best-seller before Billy even gets out of prison; the Warden thanks him, and Billy leaves the prison to universal fame and acclaim.
Being a writer seems to be the core real-world ambition Billy enjoys: he has a novel he keeps intending to begin, and he has sent sample scripts to a radio comedian who happens to be in town to open a supermarket; Billy is sure the comedian will hire him and take him to London. But the comedian doesn’t even remember Billy’s scripts and just gives him the brush-off when Billy finally does get to see him.
Real-world problems are mounting for Billy: he has gotten himself engaged, twice, to two very different girls: Barbara, the shy, repressed girl who really loves him but won’t even kiss him before they are married, and Rita, the brassy waitress who’s been shagging Billy. Billy gave Rita an engagement ring, only he got it back from her ‘to give to a jeweler for alteration’ and gave it to Barbara. Now Rita wants the ring back, and Billy is trying to get Barbara to give up the ring ‘for alterations’ to get it back to Rita. Only Barbara won’t give it up. To make matters worse, he has invited both girls to his home for tea on the same day. And, of course, he has told them both a pack of lies about his home life. And on top of this, an old flame, Liz (Julie Christie in her first big role on film) has come back to town.
Billy is telling everybody that the comedian will hire him and he’ll be going to London. This is his escape. He tries to quit his job at the funeral home only to have his obnoxious boss Mr Shadrack (Leonard Rossiter) let Billy know they are on to him and the calendar/postage gag, and he can’t quit until he’s worked off all the money he owes.
Billy goes in and out of fantasy. Walking by a stadium where a football (soccer) match is in progress, he dreams he is the Prime Minister of Ambrosia promising a new and better future for all (in best Winston Churchill imitation) to the mad cheers of the populace. But his real life is getting worse and worse. The two women are pressuring him for the ring, to see his parents. The comedian doesn’t know him and has no job for him. And when Billy shouts at his Grandmum, she has a bit of an attack, making his Dad even harsher on Billy.
That night the whole town congregates at the dance hall. Billy tries to avoid Rita and Barbara (he has dates with both, of course) but they meet up and the whole business of two fiancées and one ring comes out; the women fall into a catfight. The band though is playing a song Billy and a mate wrote, which is good – until the MC gives Billy credit and announces Billy will be going to London to write the radio show; more humiliation is bound to follow when this is revealed as a lie, and indeed, several of Billy’s pals are razzing him when the dance hall applauds him, calling out, ‘Billy Liar! Billy Liar!’
Billy escapes the dance hall for a walk with Liz. They catch up on old times. Billy is amazed that Liz has left the small town so many times, but she says it’s easy, you just get a ticket and get on the train. Liz seems to really understand Billy, she knows all his faults and fibs and likes him anyway. They share a penchant for day-dreaming, and Billy reveals to Liz, the first person ever, his fantasies of Ambrosia. Liz wants to make love to Billy in the park, he proposes, really seems to mean it, and they lie down in the grass. Only Billy’s mates have followed them, and mock him. The secret of ‘Ambrosia’ is now out, and it’s a sure thing that by Monday night the whole town will know all about it.
Billy is furious but Liz tells him it doesn’t matter, those guys, the whole town, aren’t worth it. She tells him they can go to London tonight on the midnight train; that she’ll be on it, and she gets him to agree to meet her at the station.
Billy goes home, once more full of hope. At home though, unpleasantness awaits: his Dad tells him that Grandmum is in the hospital and Mum is there waiting for Billy. And they know all about the calendars and postage, and they’ve broken into the wardrobe and found Mum’s letter to the radio show dedication, which Billy never sent either. Billy tries to stand up for himself and stick to his promise to Liz, and he packs and leaves to go to the infirmary.
There he sits with his Mum. She is no less determined to keep Billy at home, though she uses gentler tactics. Grandmum dies, and Mum grieves, and Billy departs for the station.
He walks to the station, dreaming of his regiment’s military burial of his Grandmum in Ambrosia and humming a military tune. But the camera pulls away and reveals Billy walking down a dark city street, engulfed in shadow, his tune more like whistling in the dark. We know Billy is not going to London, even though he thinks he is, and is making every move to go.
At the station he finds Rita, dragging around one of Billy’s mates who is drunk. There’s also a young soldier who is going off to serve, and supported by older women relatives. And out on the platform he finds Liz.
They board the train and wait. Only minutes before it will depart. And Billy is feeling anxious. He tries to get Liz to ask him to go back out to get something to eat – she has packed sandwiches. What about something to drink? She doesn’t want anything. Some milk? She doesn’t want any. But Billy goes out to get the milk anyway.
He stands at the vending machine. The train will depart any moment and Billy takes his time. He holds two cartons of milk in his hand, his back to the platform. He could still make it but he waits until he’s just too late, and only then turns and runs, runs when it’s too late, runs just to make a show of trying to go.
In the carriage window Liz looks out, shaking her head. She knows Billy too well, is sorry he couldn’t come but doesn’t seem to blame him too much. She didn’t really expect him to go. She has left his suitcase out on the platform for him.
Billy walks home, alone on the dark streets. But he walks a bit faster, parade march, and behind him march in step the paratroopers of Ambrosia. Billy marches up to his house and inside, and the camera pulls back down the street, as the national anthem of Ambrosia rises on the soundtrack. Billy’s window is the only one lit in the house, far away, at the end of the street, as the anthem ends and closes out the movie.
It’s an excellent picture. Schlesinger was a terrific filmmaker for about 10, 15 years. The beginning, with the radio program and shots of the streets, has a nice, naturalistic feel, but it was a bit flawed in that it’s just an effort to ‘break out’ of the play, which probably opens on Mrs Fisher dusting and cleaning and making breakfast while the radio plays the other dedications.
The biggest challenge for the picture is bringing us in and out of the daydreams. This is done usually with sound helping: either we begin to hear Ambrosia before picture takes us there, or we go on hearing Ambrosia after picture brings us back into ‘reality.’ I wonder how it might have felt if they had had the budget and tried The Wizard of Oz gambit, putting all the Ambrosia/daydream scenes in color?
One thing that had my head turning while watching was thinking how Albert Finney would have been as Billy. Tom Courtenay is a frail, slight man, and so I interpret his Billy as the recourse of a weakling; when he interacts with others, telling lies, it’s like somebody who has this one defensive mechanism to help him through life. But Finney is much heartier, stronger physically. He was playing Tom Jones at about this period, so I have a good picture of what he was like in a somewhat similar genre (comedy of a young man against the forces of the established order). Finney as Billy would have been more cheeky, more aggressive, more mocking. He would have been lying more out of strength than weakness, or else more out of a boyish, Peter Pan, not-yet-grown-up personality. Whilst Courtenay is lying and fantasizing because life is too heavy and hard for him, Finney might have been doing it because, well, it’s fun! And to hell with everybody else if they can’t take a joke! Finney would have been more ‘dangerous’ if you will as a suitor in the scenes with Rita and Barbara. More calculating.
I don’t know if I would have liked Finney’s Billy as well. I certainly wouldn’t have sympathized with him, or pitied him so much. But Finney is an amazing actor, and I expect he would have won me over if not with pity, then with sheer ebullience and sense of enjoyment.
The other thing that struck me is one scene. It’s the scene where Billy enters Mr Shadrack’s office to resign (because he’s so sure that he’ll get the radio scriptwriting job). Mr Shadrack isn’t there, so Billy imagines a conversation with him. Billy goes on and on, talking to the empty desk, and I was sure that the scene would take a turn for the worse when Mr Shadrack appeared in the doorway behind Billy. Sure enough it happened, but not the way I expected. The usual way to do this, the ‘elegant’ solution, is to have the camera move to follow Billy. Generally camera movement is invisible to the audience when it is ‘motivated’ by something that happens on the screen. Billy walks screen right, and the camera follows him. This is invisible to us because it gives us what we want to see; our brains are hard-wired to track such side-to-side movement. The camera moves just as our eyes would move if we were sitting where the camera is.
The natural, ‘elegant’ solution to revealing Mr Shadrack then is to get the camera over behind the desk, looking at Billy; Billy walks to one side or the other so the doorway behind him is gone out of frame; then Billy walks back, camera follows, and there is Mr Shadrack, appearing as if by magic.
Schlesinger doesn’t do it that way. He moves Billy around the desk, and pans the camera after him, right enough. For several shots the doorway is offscreen. He then moves Billy back around in front of the desk. Still the doorway is offscreen. All Schlesinger needs to do now is move Billy a little bit farther screen left.
Instead, Billy stays put, and the camera, from an unmoving spot, ‘decides on its own’ to pan left, and find Mr Shadrack.
Now why did Schlesinger do it this way? I thought it was a ‘mistake’ at first. But in general it’s never the best approach for a critic to assume the artist is ‘wrong’ but instead assume he is ‘right’ and find some sort of reason why Schlesinger would want to prefer to do it the way he did; and then see if that reason might be valid, a ‘better’ solution to the problem.
When a character commands the camera – when the camera must follow him, and nobody else in the scene – that character acquires power. He is dominating the shot. This is generally true, and so the opposite is often true as well: if the camera ignores a character and moves against him, then the character loses power. Here Billy is ‘cut down to size’ if you will, when the camera, ‘on its own’ decides to ignore him and look over there – over to the door. (I don’t think this movement is motivated by a sound from Shadrack – say a footstep or clearing of the throat – but I can’t say for sure.) Since Billy has been fantasizing of himself as a big man, an important man, someone superior to the imaginary Shadrack, when the camera moves against Billy, it deflates this image which the filmmakers hope Courtenay’s acting will have won us over (after all, the audience should be on Billy’s side at this point, and who among us hasn’t daydreamed about telling off our obnoxious and petty bosses?).
Schlesinger’s camera move might, therefore, be a deliberate effort to accelerate Billy’s loss of stature, to tear us back into ‘reality’ before Billy himself is ready for it, or aware of his boss’s presence.
I still don’t much like it though. Because the second half of this scene, in which Shadrack enters the office and proceeds to tell Billy off, rejecting Billy’s resignation in no uncertain terms, will cut Billy down quickly enough. What after all is the first thing that’s going to happen in this part of the scene? Mr Shadrack is going to walk into the office, go behind his desk, sit down, open the letter of resignation, read it. Shadrack thus can capture and command the camera with his moves, and acquire power; the camera follows him and lets Billy go in and out of frame, undermining Billy’s power in this part of the scene. This sort of solution is generally used and preferred and considered more ‘elegant’ because it is invisible and organic – organic in the sense that it is invisible and the camera is following the blocking of the actors.
(4 May 2009)
