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.


Fighting a Mass State in miniature   August 9, 2002
 39 out of 44 found this review helpful

"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.


NOT the original version   August 3, 2007
 23 out of 29 found this review helpful

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.


Already a Lucky Man   February 22, 2002
 22 out of 24 found this review helpful

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.))


Unfortunately, it's not the original cut of the film   July 31, 2007
 17 out of 19 found this review helpful

I've been waiting for this to come out on DVD for years and when I heard that Criterion would be doing it, I was overjoyed. The release lives up to Criterion's usual high standards - except in one significant respect. Back in 1969, the film had to be slightly edited in order to pass the censors in England and to receive the R rating in the US. I saw the original, uncut version of the film in Montreal, Canada, during its initial release. The difference between the original and edited versions is slight - by today's standards - but it is part of the film's history, and Criterion should at least be honest and up-front about which version they are releasing. I would have expected Criterion to release the original, uncut version, but instead they have chosen to release the edited version - despite the fact that one of the interviews included by Criterion speaks disparagingly of the edited version and the film's troubles with censors in England. A sticker on the shrink-wrap proclaimed that the disk contains the original English version of the film. Too bad "original" means censored version!