Customer Reviews

If... (The Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This movie with Malcolm McDowell is a strange and bizarre piece of work, and prior to the modern day obsession with serial killers, this one is ahead of its time. I saw this film many years ago, and it still stays in my mind as a "trip." Of course being made oin l968, it is thematic for the times. It's got the music of the 60's and the styles and the language, but the character is out there, and the ending...you've got to see it to believe it. And this is many years before the Columbine massacre. All in all, though, I'd classify this movie in the dangerous realm, but interestingly provocative. Recommended!! (Not for the kiddies, though!)

Youth desires freedom - always has, always will. This movie, with some strong acting, captures that yearning. And it has the only attractive homosexual scene (romantic rather than explicit) that I've ever happened to see. Beyond that, the story gets silly. Yes, there were some harsh boys' schools, already reformed or gone when this film was shot. As a larger social analogy, "If" attacks a society that was at worst boring, at best wonderful, but hardly evil - Britain in the Sixties could not be classified as Stalinist or Hitlerian. Beyond our teens, most of us outgrow that sweet, intense need for anarchy. We accept with some degree of grace the limitations that define the human condition, usually through love for our spouses and kids who need us to behave in responsible ways. Other individuals (including an awful lot of artistic types) never do manage to mature. Most of the immatures just continue fantasizing like juveniles - that part of myself is still drawn to this film. Other immatures collapse over time into genuine nihilism, usually through intoxicants but sometimes violence, breeding sorrow and destruction for anyone unfortunate enough to love them. Incidentally, If is an exceptionally overpriced DVD (at the time of writing) for no apparent reason beyond corporate greed. So let's machine gun the capitalist pigs.

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.))

This is not the original version of the film. This is the censored version and should be labeled as such. The fact that this film is being released in a censored version so many years after its original release is a sad comment on society today.

A mix of naturalism, surrealism, dark humor and social commentary in an examination of an upper-class English boy's public school (the equivalent of a 'private' school in the US).

Terrific acting, and some unforgettable moments and visuals. But there are some pretentious moments as well, and the ending somehow isn't as powerful as it should be.

However, I've liked it more with each viewing, it's flaws bothering me less, it's strengths seeming more special. Perhaps not quite an all time great film, but a very good, and historically important and influential one. If you like the challenging, unorthodox, complex films that were a staple of the late 1960s and the 1970s then by all means you should see this.

Always voted as one of the most influential British Films etc. etc. and all the directors other efforts are available on DVD but not this one. Can't seem to get in touch with anyone at the studio. How can this not be available yet you can get Cannon Ball Run II in every DVD store in the world? Never mind. One day it will bubble to the surface. Maybe if Malcolm McDowall has a hit movie again or something. Until then I'll settle for my grainy old VHS. tssk :(

I had to wait quite some time before I could actually lay my hands on If.... But then the waiting proved to be fully justifiable. This was time well spent, without doubt.

Naturally, after seeing Clockwork Orange for the Xth time, I began searching for more of Malcolm McDowell. Surely this man must have appeared in more excellent movies? Yes. I watched Caligula :-) and I also picked up Cat People, which was entertaining. Blue Thunder, too.

Now after If... (how many dots should I put here?) I must go see O Lucky Man! I'm talking nonsense here, but anything I might say about If... may sound boring. School? Black and white scenes? Surreal? Guns? Guns? Did I say that?

Nay, If you came this far and have now learned about If..., I know you'll keep it in the back of your head; but I assure you, after you have seen it you'll not be able to cast it aside. Acting is superb, the themes deep and carefully explored, and the ending is just 'explosive'.

In my top 10 list, where it'll show its (formidable) teeth to any rivals.

"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.

My review does not have any sophisticated analysis of content or technical merit, just my gut reaction to this great classic of the times I grew up in... Its a great film! Buy if... Watch if... Love if... My high school film club saw this movie the year I graduated, 1972. It left a long lasting impression. I only remember two movies from the club, "if..." and "The Wild Bunch." A recent movie called Masterminds reawakened my interest in searching for "if..." Glad I did, thanks Amazon Video. (Yes, it would be nice to have a remastered DVD.)