This month is our 10th anniversary, and thanks to an audience vote we held in the spring we are screening the classic 1963 black and white film Billy Liar - directed by the acclaimed John Schlesinger who went on to make many great films including Midnight Cowboy, and featuring Tom Courtney as the eponymous 19 year old Billy. Interestingly, it began life in 1959 as a brilliant comic novel by Keith Waterhouse before he and Willis Halls turned it into a West End play and then wrote the screenplay.

Living at home with his hectoring mum, dad and grandma, the feckless Billy dreams of escaping - in fact he is an out and out fantasist and cannot help spinning yarns to his friends, girlfriend/s and family which of course gets him into all sorts of trouble. Largely filmed in Bradford but with some key scenes in Leeds, Billy Liar is a great example of British ‘new wave’ cinema and explores the changing face of 1960s Northern England. Cities are being regenerated, people are on the move and opportunities are opening up, and indeed Billy gets the chance to change his future when the free spirited Liz (played by Julie Christie) offers him the chance to move to London with her. Will he take it?

Empire magazine wrote: “Reunited from the previous year’s A Kind Of Loving (1962), director John Schlesinger and screenwriters Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall bridged the gap between ‘grim oop North’ British social realism and the swagger of the Swinging Sixties with this adaptation of Waterhouse’s novel. Skulking between temerity and timidity, callousness and innocence, Tom Courtenay dominates the picture, whether defrauding his employers or duping his trio of girlfriends.”

NB: Billy Liar contains some language which would be seen as offensive by today’s audiences.