If....
Tags: comedy, avant garde, murder, cult, violence, psychedelic, satire, romantic

Plot synopsis:
Set in a British independent boys boarding school in the late 1960s (most of the scenes were filmed at Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire, with the remainder at Uppingham School in Rutland and Aldenham School in Hertfordshire, England, UK). Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) is one of three non-conformist boys among the returning class. They are watched and persecuted by the "Whips", senior boys given authority as 'prefects' over juniors. The prefects are entitled to the services of "Scum", who are first-year boys assigned to run errands, make tea and generally act as unpaid servants. This refers to the old tradition of "fagging" which still persisted in many British independent boys' schools.The early part of the film shows scenes in the school as the pupils return at the start of a new term. Mick Travis, the protagonist, arrives with a suitcase on his shoulder, wearing a black Derby hat, with a black scarf across his face to hide his moustache. Stephans comments, "God, it's Guy Fawkes back again", hinting at the conclusion of the film. Rowntree (Robert Swann) is the Head Whip, and he revels in his power, ordering the junior boys to "Run! Run in the corridor!"After the first evening meal, the Whips conduct some of the more mundane business of the school, signing up boys for "Confirmation class" and "VD clinic". Each boy has to lower his pants so the school nurse can inspect his genitals.These early scenes show the school's customs and traditions. The Headmaster (Peter Jeffrey) is somewhat remote from the boys and the House Masters. Mr. Kemp (Arthur Lowe), the House Master to Mick's dorm, is told "I'll have to get back to you on that" when he brings things to the Headmaster's attention. Kemp himself is easily manipulated by the Whips into giving them a free hand in enforcing discipline. Some of the staff are shown as suffering from various perversions. For example, the school chaplain (Geoffrey Chater), who is also the geometry master, enjoys grasping the boys and hurting them during class. At bedtime, Mr. Kemp sings a hymn as his wife (Mary MacLeod) accompanies him on the recorder; the matron (Mona Washbourne), overhearing, is driven to near orgasm. Mrs. Kemp herself enjoys walking naked through the boys' dormitory and washroom while fondling soap, towels and other objects the boys have carelessly strewn about.One day, having sneaked off campus and into the nearby town (an act strictly forbidden by house rules), Mick steals a motorbike from a showroom and has an affair with a local waitress. Meanwhile, Wallace finds adolescent romance with Bobby Philips, a junior boy, whom he takes to bed. They indulge in self-inflicted ordeals, such as seeing how long they can hold a plastic bag over their faces.As the film progresses, it concentrates on Mick's group and their clashes with the school authorities. Mick and his friends are subject to punishments, and eventually they are sentenced to corporal punishment in the form of a severe "beating" (i.e. a caning) by the Whips. The caning is administered by Rowntree in the gym with a long run-up. The three boys are left with bleeding buttocks. Mick's punishment is especially brutal (10 strokes), yet tradition demands that he shake hands when it is over and say, "Thank you".(Note: scenes are shot through with surreal elements, such as some scenes being shot in black and white. This was not for dramatic emphasis, as people presumed, but simply because the huge windows at the college gave off obstructing light that affected the camera lenses. Another explanation given later by Lindsay Anderson is simply that the production was running out of money.)A few days later, during a paramilitary exercise training in the nearby woods, Mick and his friends play a practical joke on the Whips by planting a bomb containing paint which they detonate and humiliate the Whips and the supervisors of the military exercise. As a result, Mick and his friends are punished by being forced to clean up the church basement for the weekend. During the cleaning, Mick and his group find a large cache of various weapons dating back to the second world war (rifles, heavy machine guns, sub-machine guns, pistols, grenades and even mortar tubes with live rounds). Mick decides to use this to get revenge against the establishment for their misfortune.At the climax, in a surreal sequence, on Founders' Day, when parents are visiting the school, Mick and his group start a fire under the hall, smoke out the parents, staff and boys, and open fire on them from a rooftop. Led by the visiting General who was giving the speech, the staff and boys break open the Combined Cadet Force armoury and fire back.The Headmaster tries to stop the firefight and calls for peace. Mick's girl, who is on the roof with them, produces a Webley Revolver from her belt and shoots the Headmaster through the forehead in cold blood. As the battle continues, the camera closes in on Mick's face as he defiantly keeps firing, ending the film with a fade-out and an echo of gunfire with the film's title "if...." emblazoned in red on the screen.

Review: Lindsay Anderson, arguably Britain's most underrated director, continued to expand upon McDowell's Mick Travis character in two subsequent movies, but 'If..' has a very different feel from those "sequels", if they can truly be termed that, and can be watched as a stand alone movie.
I left the cinema feeling so goddamn moved!At times the sheer 60s-ness, and random dialogue ("I like Johnny") can seem to undermine the viewing experience, but the spirit of bold rebellion which saturates this marvelous film wins you over.
It's a state of the nation movie, a fantasy, an account of public school life told with an almost documentary-like precision and it's as fresh today as it was when it first appeared, (hard to believe that was almost 40 years ago or that Malcom McDowell was ever this young).Using Jean Vigo's "Zero De Conduite" as a template, (it's not a remake), Anderson's movie is quintessentially youthful and so accurately does it depict its milieu as to appear almost arrogant.
(His comments about financial restraints dictating the fluctuations between black-and-white and colour photography may well be true but the choices seem inspired, nevertheless and the great Miroslav Ondricek's camera-work is superb).He was also a great actor's director, often working with many of the same actors both in theatre and in cinema and he extracts marvellous performances from the likes of Arthur Lowe, Peter Jeffrey, Mona Washborne and Geoffrey Chater representing the Establishment as well as pitch-perfect performances from David Wood, Richard Warwick, Rupert Webster, Robert Swann and Hugh Thomas, all new to cinema, as the students.The film made Malcom McDowell a star and for a few short years, (here, in "O Lucky Man", as Alex in "A Clockwork Orange"), that star burned brightly before he sold out to Hollywood and his career began to flounder in a series of mediocre American movies, reaching a nadir with "Caligula".
The first entry to the Mick Travis trilogy ("If...", 1968, O Lucky Man, 1973, and "Britannia Hospital", 1982), "If.." is a surreal black comedy about an English private boys' school and a student rebellion.
Malcolm McDowell in his first big screen role and the first of three Mick Travis' movies is a charismatic leader of the rebel students who call themselves the Crusaders and like to break the rules.
The cruel corporal punishments from the faculty and the older students provoked a bloody uprising against the school system.Made almost 40 years ago, "If.." still has a power to shock as well as to entertain and it remains an outstanding and controversial depiction of the problems that have not disappear from the English public school system or from any school system as well as from society in general.I am sure that Stanley Kubrick saw "If..." and was impressed by McDowell's debut performance, by his charisma that shines through his close-ups and especially in the final shot of "If...", and by his face that strangely combines innocence and youthful openness with cynical scornful almost reptilian contempt for humanity.
But attempting to defeat these people by hysterical overreaction such as that of Travis merely results in them clamping down further.I also realised how much Monty Python's Meaning of Life draws on the film - during the chapel scenes I could have sworn Arthur Lowe was going to stand up and intone 'Oooooh God you are so big!'What we don't see from the likes of Lindsay Anderson is a similar satire on state schools, with their equally vicious and degrading practices.
was re-released at the end of the 1990s, it came with the slogan: 'An Anarchist's Punk Dream!' This certainly summarises the film's main ethos, in which revolution and the dream of blowing up the old school master is a dream of every anti-social English school boy.
The housemaster and headboy were 2 characters I can especially recall, but there are flashes of others in many of the characters.When you see this film, see it as a historical satire, with first the historical atmosphere of a public school being accurately recreated, then second the satire taking form just in time to administer the purgative judgement of the surreal denouement.There.
Lindsay Anderson's "if...." presents a fable disguised (most of the time) as a slice-of-life set in a British upper-class boarding school.
Bouyed by the twin-barreled audacity of Anderson and the film's breakout star, Malcolm McDowell, "if...." fiercely, timelessly encapsulates the spirit of 1960s rebellion even as it threatens to go off the rails every five minutes in the second half.McDowell is Mick Travis, a returning upperclassman at College House, one of several houses that constitute a British boarding school.
Told someone dies of starvation in Calcutta every eight minutes, his reply is a succinct: "Eight minutes is a long time."There are points where one can't help feeling the script needed another round of polishing, like the way it introduces characters like the teacher Mr. Thomas and the "scum" Biles and Jute only to drop them in the second half as Mick's story takes over completely.
It has no moral, symbolic truth, or meaning to it; this movie simply plays out the fantasy of killing teachers and people in "power" that annoy you.If you think a murder rampage/ school shooting similar to columbine or virginia tech is a rational and sensible way to deal with teachers and institutions you don't like, then I guess you'll love this movie.
This was the first of the Mick Travis films and looks at social class in Britain by setting society within a house in a public school.
The story may not be to everyone's taste - indeed the heavily armed retribution Travis may have taken on his school may not seem such a fantasy now and might not be something everyone can view as harmless fairytale (even if it is metaphor for rising up over the ruling classes).As a film it doesn't totally convince but as a message about social standings it is very well observed in not totally to everyone's taste..
It's also odd but the last time I saw this film I could have sworn its title "If..." didn't pop up at the very end but was right before an ending that showed the school on a typical day as if nothing had happened and the violent ending was only a possibility (hence "If....").
I must have dreamed that ending.It's still a well made film with a provocative title and good original music by Marc Wilkinson (a song called SANCTUS from the African mass "Missa Luba" is also used).Unfortunately -- at least for me -- there's only one memorable scene in the entire film and it's a turning point in it.
Maybe it's because most of the older students at this school are played by actors in their twenties (Malcolm McDowell was 25 at the time) and the fact that most of the younger students look like they're about 11 years old, but for the older students it looks like the greatest sadness in their lives isn't the regimented environment they live in at this school but that they are basically treated like children or same as the youngest students.
Malcolm Macdowell puts in an excellent performance as the leader of a gang of 'crusaders' who are out to take on the oppressive authoritative regime at their public school, with overreaching authority placed in the hands of the whips.There are some extremely powerful scenes such as the beating given to the three school boys by their elders for their bad attitude, the classic cafe scene and the acrobatic scene when an elder boy (Richard Warwick) goes through a gymnastic routine on a bar watched and admired by a younger boy (Rupert Webster).
And it's superior to sex.A good movie is one whose most noteworthy line comes just before the violence it motivates: "The thing I hate about you is the way you give Coca-Cola to your scum and your best teddy bear to Oxfam and expect the rest of us to lick your frigid fingers the rest of your frigid life." It's a very straightforward citation of a clear-cut turning point.
With its statements on the suppression of the individual and corruption through ideals of power, "If..." doesn't necessarily tread revolutionary cinematic ground, but has a graceful flow, a style rich with imaginative touches (random shifts to black-and-white), brilliant performances by a cast of unknowns, and a knockout ending that isn't as ridiculous as you might think.With the presence of McDowell (in his first film role) and the themes of the script, certain parallels can be made to "A Clockwork Orange" (1971), but "If..." has no problems standing on its own as a completely unique work..
Most of the time the characters are just plain bored (which is at least true to what school was mostly like), so a need for surrealism to keep the picture going comes into play leading to a weird feeling of what is real and what is fantasy, as it becomes increasingly intermixed.
If what?The story revolves around the character of Mick (played by a very young Malcolm McDowell in a memorable performance.) Mick is a bit of a rebel, whose rebelliousness grows as he's exposed more and more regularly to the harshness of life in this place, culminating in his being caned along with several others for having a poor attitude.
Director Lindsay Anderson also used a strange blend of black and white with colour throughout the movie, and, again, there didn't seem to be any clear reason for why certain scenes were filmed in B&W.
I implore anybody who has not seen this work of art to do so immediately as it could change your perspective on life,love,childhood  and gun battles at public schools.This is, for me, one of the best films ever made..
The protagonists here are pupils in an English public boarding school, whose ages vary from 12 to 18, the newcomers undergo the hazing of the elder ones and some harassment from adults, the sixth-formers enjoy their position of authority; expressing it in the most sordid fashion while a minority rebels against the rules, proudly brandished by the headmaster and the teachers.That the film takes place in one of the most civilized countries of the worlds and most ancient democracies speaks for itself.
The film is rather graphic showing difficult scenes where kids are being bullied and tormented in a way that would make today's audience cringe, but maybe the treatment in the end plays like an euthanasia against a society whose cancer is just a sort of inner decadence, when you believe you're in your total right, you make yourself enemies who'd believe the same, it's one extreme for another, and in-between, there can only be victims.The film was certainly admired for its creative use of black and white and color, its profusion of vulgarity and depravation, its total non-commitment to any narrative rule.
The first half of the film, while dull, just shows the day to day life of the boys in a British boarding school in a realistic, matter of fact fashion.
This is all in an environment of bizarre old rituals, Latin refrains, and hardly more intelligible English public school slang (and of course, it wouldn't be a classic story of British public school life without some innuendo about buggery.) Then, as the storytelling takes on an increasingly surreal tone where we question what is real and what is fantasy, the boys and a girl from town get their hands on weapons and go after those who have wrong them.The 1960s was a time of war in Vietnam (and other violent conflicts brought to viewers globally by the media) and youth uprisings in the United States and France.
does not glamorise, and thus vulgarise, youth rebellion the way films about student revolt seem to do (then again, a male single-sex, rural boarding school is a subject that would be hard to glamorise).It is through the adolescent eyes of Mick Travis and a small band of his fellows that we experience the loneliness, tedium, casual cruelty, claustrophobia, philistinism, and jingoism exhibited by his very conservative boarding school, and see him reacting to his desolate prison with a disturbing but darkly funny sense of fantasy.If....
In this, he was no doubt helped by his, at the time young first AD- a certain Stephen Frears.Still, it is the central performance, by Malcolm McDowell, one of the greatest in film, in what was his first leading role (arguably, he has never quite stopped playing Mick Travis) which stands out in this already outstanding film.
I remember laughing out loud when the big gun was brought out by The Girl at the end for the shooting scene, and of course this was years before the tragic school shootings in both the USA and Europe.Many New Englanders look up to British society.
my first reaction, on seeing this extraordinary film in 1968, three years after emerging from just such a school myself, was how accurately, to the last detail, Lindsay Anderson had hit off the atmosphere, the ethos, and especially the sounds of these places.
If...., takes apart the English "old boys school" mentality that was present for such earlier films, like Tom Brown's Schooldays....The turbulence of the late 60's echoes some of the same problems we are experiencing today, and that, unfortunately, is Life imitating Art...."IF" focuses on that Extreme facet of retribution...in a bizarre yet understandable fashion.
It is a good look at the "Public School" system that is still present today, in fact....also appreciate that this molded part of Malcolm McDowell's appeal in later films, Like A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, OH LUCKY MAN, and FLASHMAN....
The public school fable which ends with a gun battle, in which rebel trio Malcolm McDowell (one of the great movie entrances, face swathed in a scarf and hair flopping forward), Richard Warwick, and David Wood, move through a traumatic term until situations cause them to snap.Lindsay Anderson's film has its moments, but is often pretentious, and not helped by alternating black and white and colour for its scenes (for economy reasons, as has been suggested, or for plot reasons?).
With not a little adolescent self-loathing, and being at the time infatuated with a boy of Bobby Phillips's age who exuded a similar aura of gorgeousness, I saw myself in Denson, the bigoted pro-establishment whip licking the foam from his lips as he gazes longingly at the young boy who is shaving him.Beatings by prefects had been abolished shortly before I arrived, our dress and customs were not quite so formal and there was a rather less pro-establishment feel, yet the film caught the essence of that type of school like no other.
Of course more recent films have, in very different styles and settings, covered this territory much more thoroughly, especially the wonderful F**king Amal.Watching the film again some thirty five years later many feelings were the same, but this time I was utterly charmed by McDowell's performance as Travis and I found much more humour.
By far Lindsay Anderson's most popular film and one could argue deservedly so (though I personally like all his films other than the sad finale to the Mick Travis trilogy, "Britannia Hospital"), "If..." is an unforgettable, powerful rebel yell which I believe to be allegorical in nature but works perfectly fine if taken literally.
This a film for those who were once in the old British School System and for those who want to know what it was like.
Malcolm McDowell and director Lindsay Anderson both turn in their finest efforts in this haunting yet amusing story of rebellion at a repressive British boarding school.
He sets the tone of the stifling pressure that penetrates through College House and plots the movie like a time bomb;  the audience feels the pressure bubbling throughout the 110 minute film up until its penetrating ending.
Filmed on location, partly at Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire, England - where the director of 'If...', Linsday Anderson, was himself a student- the authentic setting instils a very real feeling of a repressive public school in the viewer's mind, as does the dialogue and portrayal of the hierarchical structure of British society, represented by the school.While 'If...' was a significant product of its time, it still nonetheless has the power to shock the viewer, particularly if they are survivors of the public school system.
Roughly first half of the film is like a documentary--a recreation of the horrid life in a British public college (to translate into American, a 'private high school').
The other movie staring Malcolm McDowell as an angry young man hyperviolent anti-authoritarian figure, Lindsay Anderson's "If..." is just that, a question into the possibility of a figure, so in love with the idea of the romantic mix between Eros and Thanatos, combined with a certain amount of repressive environment characterized by a very classic English private school, may not just snap and...Of course school shootings have a little different meaning today, but a marked difference between what this film is expressing and what school shootings have come to express is the very act of expression itself: McDowell is quixotic, an hopeless romantic that poises himself and acts out his rebellion into the very physicality of his being.
The end scene could be argued away as a fantasy, but for moments such as the bishop sitting up out of the drawer, the sudden black-and-white, the full acceptance of McDowell's character's dreams by other angry young men.
It stars Malcolm McDowell in his first screen role and his first appearance as director Lindsay Anderson's "everyman" character Mick Travis.If....
One of the most striking things about the movie is the intensely realistic style of the beginning, which almost makes you feel like you actually attended a British boarding school.
Malcolm McDowell's fans should by no means skip this film, or Anderson's follow-up to this, his quasi-sequel called "O, Lucky Man!" which is just as good.Btw, there was much discussion regarding the black-&-white scenes.
there's scenes were the movies turns into a black and white film to set the mood.