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If [VHS]

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When I was in high school, we had a tradition where we'd go out and rent bad movies. Gradually, this changed to renting weird movies and eventually segued into renting GREAT movies. One of our favorite actors was Malcolm McDowell, the smirking imp we'd seen in "A Clockwork Orange" and later in "O Lucky Man!", another collaboration with the great British director Lindsay Anderson ("This Sporting Life", "In Celebration", "Britannia Hospital", and, incredibly, "The Whales of August"!) I grew particularly fond of his blend of sarcasm and vulnerability (vainly believing I possessed same; I may have been right) and as a result became quite desperate to see this rare movie, which was actually supposed to be BETTER than "O Lucky Man!" I didn't get to do so until a few weeks ago, fully nine years since I graduated high school. I was not disappointed.

As it stands, "If..." isn't only a great Malcolm McDowell film, it's also a great movie about the 60s in both Western society and more specifically Britain in its post-imperial hangover (one of the last British imperial dramas before the Falklands, the conflict in and evacuation of Aden--present-day Yemen--reached completion in 1967, probably while "If..." was filming). The title itself apparently comes from the famous Kipling poem which embodied the highest ideals of imperial Britain. College House, the school attended by Mick Travis--McDowell--and his two friends, is dominated by prefects, or "whips," seniors who control the student body in the name of the weak-willed headmasters and teachers, who represent the 60s radical view of liberal democracy. The coercive actions--cold showers, beatings--administered by the whips to Travis and his fellow rebels prefigure the punishment that would be delivered by the Chicago police, Parisian CRS, and Red Army to student demonstrators and the Czech people in May and August 1968 (in both capitalist and communist regimes the punishments are justified in the name of "society" or "the people").

Travis and his friends, the sarcastic Knightley (David Wood) and the pensive Wallace (Richard Warwick), negotiate their travails with wit and cunning and pick up allies along the way, a waitress from a local coffeeshop (Christine Noonan) and younger student Bobby Phillips (Rupert Webster). These two apparently become lovers of Travis and Wallace, respectively. Interestingly, while Anderson follows the pattern of other 60s "rebel" movies by marginalizing women, the relationship between Wallace and Phillips is sensitively and touchingly handled. This was a rare thing for the macho boys of the New Left, whose radicalism stopped at the closet door and who generally seemed to perceive homosexuality as an aberration of the ruling classes. The film eventually ends with a surreal, bloody battle on school grounds that, while it will probably make post-Columbine viewers understandably squirm, seems, in the movie's moral universe, the only possibly end to the institutionalized oppression Travis and his pals face.

Just as in "O Lucky Man!" there are hilariously surreal touches to the movie, lessening the shock of its end and underscoring the absurdity of life at College House. Fans of Anderson and McDowell won't be disappointed, and any who are interested in the intersections between film and history are definitely recommended to rent or buy this bewitching movie.

When i got out of the Navy and moved to Atlanta in 1972, there was a great hole-in-the-wall cinema (174 seats, one broken) called "The Film Forum". George and Mike Ellis served the best fresh popcorn in town, and ran movies you just didn't see anywhere else in the early 70's -- I first saw "The Boys in the Band", "The Ruling Class" and "Phantom of the Paradise" at the Film Forum. I saw so many great films there that i can forgive them for running "Harold & Maude" about every fifth week...

In addition to two shows a night every evening of their regular feature for that week, they also ran a special $1 midnight movie on Fridays and Saturdays. (In later years, "Rocky Horror" became the midnight standard for a couple of years.)

And that is where i saw "...if..." for the first time.

I've been an anglophile most of my life (beginning at a rather tender age with "Swallows & Amazons"), so i had some idea of what English Public (private) School life was likely to be like, and may have understood what was happening here more quickly than some of my firends who saw it with me.

In the context of what starts out as a pretty starightforward-appearing school film, Anderson & MacDowell give us a rather Marxist allegory of modern class struggle, steadily but almost imperceptibly moving from realism to a surreal parable of revolution.

The final sequences, with the little old lady with the submachine gun blazing away screaming "Bastards! Bastards!", the school prefects organising the "good" (loyalist) students to fight the Revolution and pitched battle raging, have stayed with me ever since, even when i wouldn't see the film for years at a time.

MacDowell (in his first real feature role) gives an incredible performance that both foreshadows and (in my opinion) *over*shadows his next role, as Alex in "A Clockwork Orange". "Clockwork" was hailed, pretty much rightly, as a view of a disintegrating society tearing itself to pieces -- "..if.." covers much the same ground, and does it better and more memorably in miniature than Kubrick's huge canvas and broad brush strokes.

MacDowell's Mick Travis and his friends are pretty much decent if disaffected characters; but the System, which cannot tolerate any variances, must either grind them down or drive them to rebellion -- they choose the latter, and you will never think of school in the same way again after you see their gradual radicalisation and the result.

((Don't believe the stories about not having enough money to print the whole film in colour being the reason for several black&white scenes in the film -- the real reason is that for the scenes shot in chapel they were not able to set up lights and had to shoot by natural light, which came in through a big stain-glass window. They tried some test shots on high-speed colour stock, but the results were hopelessly grainy and the colour values shifted constantly as the angle of the sun changed. So they decided to just go ahead and use B&W for those scenes, and, when Anderson saw how the B&W footage cntrasted with the colour, he decided to use B&W at other points to keep the audience off-balance as the film slipped from realism to surrealism.))

I've been waiting for a release of If... for a long long time, and it is so good to see it will be given the deluxe treatment with Criterion. Lindsay Anderson created a landmark film which captured the talents of a young Malcolm McDowell at his best. You get the feeling that Wes Anderson took his cue from this film when he made Rushmore, but what sets If... apart is the surrealism that creeps into the movie and eventually takes it over, resulting in its wildly hallucinogenic climax. All the extras will make this anxiously awaited DVD a real treat, as hopefully we will be able to get a peek into the mind that created this film. The addition of Thursday's Children certainly makes this deluxe package worthwhile.

"Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore get wisdom and with all thy getting, get understanding." --Proverbs IV:2

The opening quote from Lindsay Anderson's if... is what three sixth formers (one year away from being seniors) named Travis, Knightley, and Wallace strive for, in a revolutionary way. (Note: there are seven forms {grades to us Yanks} in a British school below university level).

This is also the story of Jute, the first former who's nervous in his debut at College House. It's a strange new world, but it's stifling, rigid, full of discipline, conformity, obedience, and an adherence to religion and national pride. Figures--since they lost an empire, now they turn on their own people for their mass state. Mr. Kemp, a professor, tells the first formers: "We are your new family and you must expect the rough and tumble that goes with any family life. We're all here to help each other. Help the House and you'll be helped by the House." Professors, the student whips, and the bishop are the authority figures to be reckoned with. Jute is pressured into learning the names of the seniors and pronouncing school terminology correctly--e.g. local girls are called local tarts. But this is a well-known slice of British culture, the British boarding school. The communal study areas, dining halls, rugby matches, mandatory church attendance, war games,... it's all there. Scenes in b&w at times underline the lifelessness and austerity of the school, but also serve as a moving photograph that mirrors that photos Travis collects in his dorm room.

Speaking of which, the ongoing turmoil is a backdrop in the form of LIFE magazine-style photos of Vietnam, civil strife in African countries, soldiers, predatory animals, portraits of Che Guevara and Mao Tse-tung strewn in Travis and co.'s room. Travis utters his revolutionary credo while reading from a book: "The whole world will end soon--black brittle bodies peeling to ash." "There's no such thing as a wrong war." "Violence and revolution are the purest acts." "War is the last possible creative act."

There are hazings, instructors who are bored, instructors who fondle students, but there's also a headmaster who tries to be understanding, as he does to Travis and company. He tells them that to proclaim individuality is sense of existentialism and that it's the hair rebels that step in the breach. But do society and the establishment really value the rebel, without whom there is no progress?

Various scenes spell out the positive and more refreshing emotions. Release is found in the fencing between the three rebels. The sight of blood is reality. Also, the smell of freedom is expressed when the girl whom Travis and Knightley meet at the coffee shop stands atop their stolen motorcycle, arms outstretched as if in flight, a smile of ecstasy on her face, with choir song "Sanctus" from the Missa Luba playing.

One b&w scene that made an anti-war statement was that of the nude Matron alone in the school while the boys and instructors are out on war games. She walks inside the dorm rooms, handling one of the boys' clothes. It's that maternal instinct of longing for children as well as the simplicity and beauty of her nudity in contrast to the ugliness of war. But it also denotes the contrast of the peaceful interior to the violence going on outside.

Malcolm McDowell (Travis) is wonderful in his starring debut as the leader of the "crusaders." A host of well-known British actors include Graham Crowden as the history professor, (Waiting For God series), Arthur Lowe as Mr. Kemp (Bless Me Father series), and Peter Jeffrey as the headmaster who tries to understand the three rebels.

The final scene generates a lot of debate and controversy but it's an apt denouement of what has been portrayed up to that point. An artfully executed film not to be missed.

One of the great movies from the 60's -- or any other decade. When originally viewed in that time of civil disobedience and resistance to "authority" it was riveting, provocative, and stirring. But that was then, this is now. As great as the ending was during its original release, all who saw it knew that it was still fantasy -- an insightful comment on the suffocating strictures of public morality and convention. Now the fantasy has become reality. Columbine, Palestine, and 9/11 have shown us what Travis and his friends already knew -- that a single bullet (or act) can change history, and that those unafraid to die are the ones to be feared the most. There was nothing inherently sinister about the boys of College House. They were the children of the establishment. Children of the privileged, unlike the borstal boys of "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner". Travis was not born to violence, he was driven there by things that should not have done so -- patriotism, reasonableness, and the "consequences" of resisting authority. Who dares to draw the line between a revolutionary and a terrorist? Do you find the actions of today's ultra-radicals incomprehensible? Try examining the labyrinthine psychological journeys portrayed in this incredible film. Did Anderson realize what he had done here? Sometimes, it seems, the creation acquires insights and takes on a meaning of its own, regardless of the intent of the creator. Pogo was right.

This is not the original version of the film. This is the censored version. As such, it should be labeled that way. The fact that this film has been released in a censored version so many years after its original release is a sad testament on society today. I have lost respect for Criterion.

In high school in the middle 1970s we never could get to see this movie but we all owned a copy of the screenplay. Finally I saw the film at a university showing in 1978 or 1979. I hadn't seen it since. From the reviews since 2000 it appears some people in the US had it on VHS or DVD but I don't know how that was possible. I never could find it. I assumed it was being surpressed out of political fear. Anyway, all these years later, I'm still not sure I like how the movie slips the bounds of reality to the point where you're not sure this isn't supposed to be just a fantasy (the vicar in the drawer, the main characters not speaking the last 15 minutes of the movie, the charage across the clean quad that in the previous shot was battle strewn). This shift to fantasy is jarring because up to the last half hour of the movie it is as brutally naturalistic as This Sporting Life (except for the fantasy sex sequence - clearly meant to be fantasy - in the cafe). Am I wrong to find this shift to fantasy an artistic capitulation? Am I the only one who thought the lads burning the stuffed crocodile meant this was all to be seen as something like the collages with pictures from Africa? Nevertheless, I know I'll be watching this DVD many times.

Just saw this for the first time, and as a brit who went to a public school in the 1990s, I have to say its amazing how much of this film still rings true. The army scenes, the classes, the aggression, it is absolutely brilliant. Only wish I'd seen it when i was 17....

Interesting reading the reviews by some US viewers- they seem to assume it is much more metaphorical and symbolic than it actually is. It's less a symbol of british society, or the end of empire, than a factual documentary of what life in these schools is actually like (except for the final scenes of course).

I was one of the thousands who signed up to the Internet campaign to get this classic movie released on DVD. Was it worth the wait? Yes, certainly, although I must confess to have watched only the movie itself, not the extras. (The exclusive screenplay, by the way, is just that: 53 pages of script, without any introduction or critique, bound into a paperback which carries no ISBN.)

Seeing it again, I realise what a schoolboy fantasy it is: the boys (not the teachers) are really in charge, the sexually repressed matron wanders naked around the dorms while the boys are out, you can kill teachers and you don't really get punished (and what's more, the teachers recover), you can steal motorbikes without negative consequences, and there's a forgotten arsenal of weapons beneath the school stage.

I saw this in the early 1970s while at a public school not so different from the regime depicted here. There seemed nothing odd to me at the time about the levels of bullying etc, although seeing it today, I find it harder to take the beating scene in the gym and the ridiculous speeches from masters and prefects alike about the necessity of the house having the right attitude.

But I think it was a little dangerous to show us schoolboys this film, not because we all ran riot afterwards, but because it illustrated the sheer damned sexiness of being a rebel. I saw this film with Bruce Dickinson -- the one who got expelled from our school and went on to front Iron Maiden -- and I can't help feeling we were all a little inspired. (The much-bullied Bruce even went on to become a star fencer and passionate army cadet!)

I won't waffle on too much about this great film, suffice it to say that I first saw this in about 1980, when I was attending a "private" school in Australia (Melbourne) which had similar attitudes to the one's portrayed here. In "If" the system is absolute, this is a school run like an army, and a very English army at that. ruthless, brutal and efficient, any individuality is quickly snuffed out, orders are to be obeyed. In one scene the school chaplain is sermonising about how to desert "Jesus" is to lead to certain punishment, then he inexplicably says "and we are all deserters" and the "sermon" is a bizarre comparison of Christianity with being a soldier in a war. This really could be the only scene in the film, where one of the principle authority figures displays honesty and self awareness?

Malcolm McDowell is absolutely fantastic in the lead role as "Travis" he just needs to stare, and he appears to sneer, or at least appear hate filled. In a very pivotal scene Travis and his two room mates are savagely whipped, just for having "the wrong attitude" a scene which seems to create in my mind the feeling that the rest of the film's "events" are really just in Travis's mind, a kind of waking revenge fantasy?

In a way this film, like no other, shows how this regimented English class structure and schooling system was turning a creative, hormone filled adolescent young man, into a killer, a psychopath. But instead of "doing" the killer scream, Travis's scream was a glowering, internalised, smouldering fire!

This film is so well acted, filmed, and edited it should be mandatory viewing for all film student's, and Lindsay Anderson, was really on the button when this was made, only a few months later the streets of Paris were ablaze with student unrest, and revolution was in the air. A must see cinema experience, for all who want to see a film as fine art, and like all great art, it is multi-layered and open to many interpretations, as it should be.