Director: John Schlesinger
Year Released: 1963
Rating: 3.0
What would you do if you were a troubled young man (Tom Courtenay) in poor ol' Northern England: Get on a train to London with the adorable Julie Christie - your perfect soul mate (she's reasonable, extremely attractive and sexually experienced) - and try to do your best to get a job in the city? Or stay at home in your parents' house, living like a parasite and bouncing from meaningless job to meaningless job, from flawed girl you don't really love to other flawed girls you don't really love? The rational choice is the former - it implies emotional growth and maturity - but the title cad chooses the latter, which happens to be one of the many poor decisions he makes in this movie, a portrait of developmental stagnation. I don't find this so much amusing as cringe-worthy and psychologically troubling, a warning against living inside your head or having dreams you are ill-equipped to follow through on - with any other protagonist, I'd be furious with the ending, but with a character as unfixable as Billy, it's the move that best fits his character.
