Julie Christie #6 and #7

Finally, my most anticipated Julie Christie film, Billy Liar. The film that got everybody talking about her really barely features her. She's in three scenes, eleven minutes. Two of these scenes constitute the best scenes in this film, a very good film at that.

Tom Courtenay (Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner) is a young man constantly hiding from reality in his daydreams of a nation he is in charge of. He dreams of moving to London and being a screenwriter, but he doesn't write and he's gone ahead and old everyone he got a job anyway. He's also managed to get himself engaged to two very annoying girls, while really being in love with his long-time, flighty friend Julie Christie.

This is the first film Christie made with John Schlesinger (followed by Darling and Far From the Madding Crowd), and it's the closest we've been able to get to one of her characters. Christie tries to convince Courtenay to move away to London just for the hell of it and marry her, and in doing so reveals the inner workings of her character in a beautiful and fanciful way. So much so that it almost feels like another of Courtenay's day dreams.

Courtenay himself is nothing short of a revelation. The brooding, working class mug of Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner disappears so completely to reveal a joyful, oblivious, working class optimist.

And special notice to the opening credits sequence, which visually sets up the class conflict setting perfectly.

The film wasn't quite as great as I was hoping it would be, but it was still a joy to sit through

Billy Liar: 7.9/10
Julie Christie in Billy Liar: 8.5/10


The same cannot be said for her next collaboration with Schlesinger. Darling won her an Academy Award in 1965, but I had a hard time opening up to a movie with such an unsympathetic protagonist. I don't think there was a scene that didn't feature Christie, something that would normally be my dream. Here, though, she's ladder climbing, aspiring actress who just wants more, more, more.

I know Darling is meant to be a critique of the then modern superficial era, and I guess it's pretty successful, but the exploits and self-destructive decisions of "Darling" Diana Scott just are not interesting enough to successfully fill up the 129 minutes that it does. The film is incredibly entertaining right out the gate, and remains so for a while. It just lets itself sag in the back half, and fails to present much of a compelling conclusion to sweeten the taste right at the end

Julie Christie is clearly giving this her all, sinking into this horrible character. She definitely deserved this Oscar, I might call it her best performance so far in this marathon, but it's too bad they couldn't do a little snip snip to script to make Darling a bit more lean and outright enjoyable.


Darling: 7.3/10
Julie Christie in Darling: 9.o/10

Next up: The director of Superman III supposedly makes a good movie with Petulia. We'll see about that.


(Shut up, I don't care about those Beatles movies he made.)