FS3: SWINGING LONDON
BILLY LIAR
Billy Liar
• One of the key texts of its time, Billy Liar is a
warm, funny and poignant look at what the
60’s meant to the young working-classes living
in the north of England. It was part of what
was called “The British New wave”, a
movement by British filmmakers and
playwrights that was committed to recreate
social realities facing Britain at the time.
By Whom?
• John Schlesinger, the director, was a young
and dynamic director, whose first film “ A Kind
of Loving” was an international hit starring a
very young Albert Finney. As a member of the
avant-garde group of young filmmakers that
constituted the New Wave, he was radical and
counter-cultural. This comes through in the
film. Released in 1963, the same year as A
Hard Day’s Night.
Social Realism
• The British New Wave was loosely based upon
the creation of a new genre of filmmaking:
Social Realism. Social Realism is the only
distinctly British style, or movement, to have
been recognised internationally, and it has
permeated not only the Cinema but also the
Television and Theatre. This movement sought
to create a new kind of ‘realism’, which
confronted audiences with the realities of
working-class life and social issues generally.
Social Realism
• Social Realism was also known as ‘Kitchen-Sink’ drama
because it featured so many conversations in domestic
settings. The style can be distinguished by the following
conventions:
• North of England settings
• Sparse, basic, no-frills mise-en-scene
• ‘Angry Young Men’ as central characters, often employed in
factories or in other demeaning manufacturing jobs.
• Domestic settings that are working-class.
• Themes of ‘fighting the system’ or ‘getting out’
• The social issues confronting the country’s ‘underclasses’
Social Realism for the Youth
• Billy Liar contains many of these conventions
but with an added level of ‘surrealism’ as well.
The social issues it deals with are the changes
confronting the younger generations, who,
intoxicated by the possibilities of a new class
mobility, find it difficult to shed the traditions
and expectations of their background. As
such, it can be inferred that the film is aimed
at the young.
Billy, symbol of youth.
• Like a Hard Day’s Night, therefore, the film has a young target
audience, but takes a very different approach to how it
represents this age group. Before analysing Billy as a
character, it is useful to look at him as symbolic of the nation’s
youth outside the narrow confines of the Beatles’ world and
the London jet set. He is the representative of the young
struggling to keep up with the changes brought on by the
Social Revolution, and with a lot more to sacrifice in making
the transition from dutiful sons and daughters to cool and
trendy Swinging Londoners, then The Beatles seem to have
had to. The Beatles, with their music and consequent
incomes, have an easy way out when compared to Billy. He is
the youth on the outside.
Billy: Psychological
• Like Alfie, this film contains a male protagonist
with a psychological dysfunction. He is a
fantasist, who when confronted with a dull,
soulless existence retreats into a fantasy world
known as Ambrosia. In Ambrosia, he is a hero,
statesman, leader, king and other
manifestations of omnipotence (power). Billy
loves to live in Ambrosia as it offers him the
escape he cannot easily achieve in reality.
Billy: Psychological
• Billy is a compulsive liar who seems to have
just finished school and begun working as an
assistant at an undertaker’s office. He
(understandably) hates his job, so is in no
hurry to get out of bed in the mornings, but
he isn’t tremendously excited about a future
career carrying on his father’s business either.
He’d rather dream, and when in reality, write.
He dreams of writing comedy in London, for a
the Radio.
Billy: Psychological
• It soon becomes clear that Billy’s job is not his
only problem, however. He also faces criminal
charges for hiding calendars he was supposed
to deliver and pocketing the postal money
instead, as well as being engaged to not one
but two girls, neither of whom he loves nor
even particularly likes. He loves Liz, the
woman who is and represents everything he
wants to be.
Billy: Psychological
• To make matters worse, his pushy parents are
gunning for him, so fed up with his lies and
delusions that they can no longer bear it. He
has fabricated so many fantasies that when he
tells them he is leaving for London, they do
not believe him. They are right not to, in a
way, as were it not for Liz returning to town
unexpectedly, Billy would not have even ahd
the opportunity to leave.
Billy: Psychological
• This opportunity, the one he’s been waiting
for, the life in the mythical ‘London’ he so
desperately craves, is one he does not and
cannot take. There are various reasons as to
why this might have happened which we will
come to later, but the essential question is
whether or not Billy wanted to go at all? All
his actions thus far could be interpreted as
subconscious calls for attention, but what
does he actually want.
Billy’s Lies=Time bomb
• Billy wants to be found out on a subconscious
level. The narrative is constructed around first
establishing all the lies he has told and what
there likely consequences will be, then
building up to their unravelling. Through this
device, the spectator experiences a strange
kind of suspense as the narrative approaches
its resolution. He is mad to think he’ll get
away with his plans, as we know he cannot.
Billy, Symbol of Confusion
• Billy’s actions may be explained in one of two
ways: as either the product of an environment
or the reflection of it. Is he the result of a
traditional and restrictive family who fail to
realise the value of his originality and
distinctiveness, or is he rather the physical
embodiment of a changing time in Britain. He
is confused about who he is and what he
wants; to the extent that he is happier in a
fantasy world.
Billy, Grammar School Boy
• In a similar way to Alfie, there are a couple of references to
Billy having been to grammar school, on a scholarship. This is
probably the result of his having excelled at the eleven plus
exams that divided children up into 3 groups at the end of
their primary schooling, with each group going to a different
kind of school: Grammar schools, Technical schools and
Secondary moderns. Only the most successful candidates got
given places at prestigious grammar schools, which usually
pathed the way to Oxford or Cambridge. Although a
predominantly Middle Class milieu, children form
disadvantaged backgrounds were given scholarships to enable
them to attend.
Billy, Grammar School Boy
• Not only does this demonstrate Billy’s intelligence
and potential, but it can serve to explain not only his
delusional fantasies but also his alienation from his
family and friends.
• During his time at the Grammar School, he will have
come into contact with many peers of greater social
standing and advantage than him. He will have been
educated to much higher level than his friends,
neighbours and most importantly his own family.
Upon leaving school, many of his classmates will
have had gone on to lead the life he so desperately
craves in London, full of glamour and excitement.
Billy, Grammar School Boy
• A job at the undertakers, in the small, grim
Northern town where he grew up, could have
hardly have been enticing therefore. The life
he is presented with is boring, mundane and
without the prospect of any mobility. Unless
he leaves, he’ll never be able to either
challenge or better himself. He is therefore
cursed by his Grammar school experience
which has made of him intellectually superior
to all those around him.
Billy, Grammar School Boy
• This could serve to explain the ways in which
his fantasies revolve around either class or
delusions of grandeur. As the great Statesman
of Ambrosia, he is always middle class and
monarchist. In his prison fantasy, he uses his
talent to achieve the greatness he craves and
cannot feasibly attain in reality, by writing a
book that is both a bestseller and instigator of
sweeping social reforms to the prison system.
Billy, Grammar School Boy
• The most significant fantasy is the one in
which he imagines his parents to be a lady and
gentleman of leisure, who are happy about his
leaving home for London and are prepared to
give him the money to do so. This runs in
opposition to a reality in which his parents
ignore the announcement of his imminent
departure as just another one of his lies.
Although they are correct in their suspicions,
they seem ignorant of his unhappiness.
Social revolution
• This is a clear message of how the social revolution
was not available to all, and that a prerequisite for
the fun and groovy London life is a certain degree of
privilege. The sacrifices he would have to make to
change class, namely breaking off the ties with his
family and the traditions with which he grew up are,
ultimately, too much. He would rather accept the
fact that his promise will only be realised within the
realms of fantasy. This is the reality of the Social
Revolution with all the human damage it can cause.
Social Revolution and Place
• The film features many images of buildings being
torn down and destroyed. The councillor, whom Billy
meets on the heath, tells him that all the old
buildings are gone. In another scene we see the
opening of a new supermarket as an event worthy of
excitement. The landscape is changing, just as Billy’s
life is. As new council flats go up, Billy’s life begins
and he must seek out his own space but is it the
mythical London or the fantasy Ambrosia.
A small, nameless Northern town
• It is small because everybody knows everyone
else’s business; where everyone is smallminded and don’t allow you to clean the slate
and start again, as Billy says. It is a town stuck
in the past, as represented by the older
characters like Billy’s family and Councillor
Duckworth. It has little that is picturesque,
instead consisting of crumbling buildings,
cemeteries, football grounds and the one
nightclub everyone goes to.
Ambrosia
• Initially, Ambrosia seems to have no
discernable features except that it has been
war-torn. It soon becomes clear, however, that
Ambrosia is located in the same Northern
Town as his reality. To imagine it as the
aftermath of a brutal and bloody conflict is
indicative of how the town might be affecting
Billy on a psychic level. Ambrosia is therefore,
rather than being an imaginary place, the
reconfiguration of the town he lives in.
The myth of London and Getting
Out.
• As with many sixties films, the theme of getting out
amongst the young is present here. He wants to get
out and gas the opportunity to do so, with a woman
he can tell the truth to and who loves him. London
represents freedom and the glamour of Danny
Boone; London is the land of opportunity. However,
when he tells Liz of his dream house for them to live
in, he imagines room where they can both sit and
just fantasize. In other words, a part of Billy knows
that even London will not stop him dreaming.
Billy, a reflection of confusion.
• Billy can therefore be seen as the reflection or
symbol of a place that is changing,
transforming from one form to another. The
future is bleak and it seems that tradition is
being torn down for the sake of a colder, more
rational landscape. As such Billy finds a way to
reconfigure and adapt it to his liking. He
represents these confusing changes
Women and The Sexual Revolution
• The film is perhaps most useful in term of a study of
the sixties as a time of change when considering the
representations of the women in the film. Billy is
engaged to two different women because he has
either had, or wants to have sex. He is closest to
being in love with a third, Liz, with whom he hasn’t
has sex but who is prepared to seep with him
without the promise of an engagement. Each woman
represents a different attitude towards sex, and as
such to the changing opinions of that time.
Barbara The Prude
• Billy is engaged to Barbara with whom he wants to
have sex. He clearly does not love her, nor even
particularly like her, but the engagement is the
charade he must go through in order to have sexual
relations. For her, any form of bodily contact is
inappropriate and the idea of sex is very much taboo.
She will not even call it what it is. She prefers to
forecast a gentile and simple future for her and Billy
in the countryside. This is the last thing Billy wants.
She is so uptight that he even tries to drug her with
aphrodisiacs.
Barbara The Prude
• Barbara represents an attitude towards sex
from before the changes of the sixties. In her
world, far from being an enjoyable experience,
sex is purely the act of reproduction,
necessary only for the purposes of
procreation. She is a stereotypical, 2dimensional character whose exaggerated
prudishness creates comedy.
Rita the Wench
• Rita, Billy’s second fiancée, is crass and vulgar. She
has already slept with Billy but only, one suspects, in
order to gain social standing and a big ring. She
treats Billy like a child and seems devoid of any
sensitivity or emotion. Billy has lied to her on
numerous occasions, but was never, it seems,
prepared to marry her. Here is a character who has
used her sexuality to ensnare and entrap, rather than
connect physically. As such, like Barbara, she also
represents a pre-sexual revolution view of sex.
Liz the Swinger
• Liz represents the freedom of the sixties. In
one of the most famous movie entrances in
film history, we see her arrive in town
swinging her bag with abandon, accompanied
by a groovy jazz soundtrack.Billy describes her
as crazy, a girl who goes wherever and does
whatever she feels like. She moves from town
to town doing odd jobs and leaving whenever
she feels like. She is also beautiful, a hint of
glamour within grim surroundings.
Liz the Swinger
• Liz is the only one Billy is honest with. He feels
no need to pretend around her as they are in
many ways kindred spirits, misfits in a highly
conservative town. She sees through Billy’s
charade and still, it seems, loves him. There is
evidence of them having been together
before. She wants to marry Billy, but not for
the purposes of social advantage or the family
life, but because they share a lot in common.
Liz the Swinger
• In a touching scene, Billy, like Barbara,
forecasts a happy future for the two of them,
in which they would have fantasy room where
they could dream for as long and as much as
they wanted. This is his idea of happiness and
he thinks he might find it with Liz, and Liz is
happy to go along with it. She seems to be the
only one who does not judge him.
Liz the Swinger
• In that same scene,Liz says she is prepared to sleep
with Billy and that ‘there have been others’. She
sexually emancipated, prepared to have sex without
marriage, even though, in this case, Billy proposes.
She is freewheeling and nomadic, glamorous and
young; a symbol of anew youth freed from the
institutions of family, class and gender. For Billy,
however, these barriers still hold firm, and he must
eventually give up the promise of a happy life with
the one women he could relate to. He doesn’t have
the spirit of the age in him.