Word: courtenay
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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BILLY LIAR. Another visit to a bleak industrial city somewhere in England. But Tom Courtenay is hilarious as a working-class Walter Mitty full of fascistic dreams, and Julie Christie as his beatnik girl friend is a bit of all right...
BILLY LIAR. Another visit to a bleak industrial city somewhere in England. But Tom Courtenay is hilarious as a working-class Walter Mitty full of fascistic drama, and Julie Christie as his beatnik girl friend is a bit of all right...
...Billy, Tom Courtenay (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner] seems the apotheosis of misspent youth. Director John Schlesinger often takes fancy too literally, weighing it down with sets and costumes, and Courtenay's hectic inner life is hilarious all by itself. The movie soars when he tosses an imaginary hand grenade as the ultimate solution of some minor social disgrace. When he lolls around his boss's office practicing a speech of resignation, Courtenay steers an unpredictable course from Churchill imita tions to doubletalk to mere gibberish, and brings off moments of pluperfect screen comedy...
Unfortunately, the hero is too palpably prolier-than-thou, his case is too obviously rigged. Fortunately, Actor Courtenay is excellent (TIME, Sept. 14). As he plays the hero, his chest is phthisical, his voice is a noise among incessant city noises, his face is as hard and blank as city pavement, his eyes are as dark and empty as broken windows in an abandoned mill...
Expanded from a short story by Alan Sillitoe, Loneliness recites the lugubrious case history of a mill-town ragamuffin (Tom Courtenay) who winds up as a Borstal boy. As he reaches reform school, the hero is met by "the Guv'nor" (Michael Redgrave). "You're here to work hard and play hard," his nibs announces with an intolerably self-righteous smirk. "We're here to try and make something...