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FS3: SWINGING LONDON BILLY LIAR. Billy Liar.
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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 small-minded 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, 2-dimensional 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.
