If... [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Lindsay Anderson Lindsay Anderson

Overview

Lindsay Anderson's If... (1968) is the first installment in a loosely woven trilogy of films which progresses through the picaresque O Lucky Man! (1973) and ends with Britannia Hospital (1982). A black comedy, If... is also a finely wrought study of youthful romanticism, couching the revolutionary ideals of 1960s counterculture in the setting of an English boarding school. In If... we are introduced to Mick Travis and his two friends Johnny and Wallace, free-thinking young men trapped for yet another term at an all-male boarding school. Life at the school is like life in a dictatorship: an irrational and hypocritical faculty at the top, an elite guard of older student "whips" (who maintain discipline) below, and the oppressed masses of younger students at the very bottom. Travis and his friends have refrained from becoming school disciplinarians. Their position as older students who refuse to tow the line draws a great deal of hostility from the whips, who see Travis and his friends as a corrupting influence on school morality. Travis, Johnny, and Wallace try a number of times to either break free of or exact revenge on the system. Nothing works, and eventually they are beaten into partial submission by the whips and banished to the school's theater to clean out the archive of forgotten stage props. They dream up a plan to end the tyranny once and for all, and during a school ceremony, stage a fire which evacuates everyone. Waiting on the roof with submachine guns and grenades, Travis and his friends engage in a revolutionary battle with their oppressors, who return fire. Like the other films in Anderson's trilogy, If... is a black comedy which at times crosses over into the surreal. As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell fact from fancy. At times the two blend so stealthily that the border between them obliterates. Do the events of the story actually happen, or are they just escapist fantasies? Certainly Travis and his friends do not really get on the roof and mow down the faculty with machine guns, like real revolutionaries. Or do they? Adding to the film's sense of dislocation is that it is partially in color, partially in black & white. Though the significance of switching between the two formats caused some debate after the film's release, it was later admitted by Anderson that the film had merely gone so far over budget that switching to black & white became an economical (though aesthetically interesting) decision. If... remains an enigmatic and masterful film, and those interested in the further misadventures of Mick Travis (played in each film by Malcolm McDowell) should pursue the other films in Anderson's trilogy.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/30/2011
UPC:	0715515085014
Original Release:	1968
Rating:	R
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:52:00
Sales rank:	11,281

Special Features

Audio commentary featuring film critic and historian David Robinson and actor Malcolm McDowell; Episode of the Scottis TV series Cast and Crew from 2003, featuring interviews with McDowell, Ondricek, Rakoff, director's assistant Stephen Frears, producer Michael Medwin, and screenwriter Ddavid Sherwin; Video interview with actor Graham Crowden; Thursday's Children (1954), an Academy Award-winning documentary about a school for deaf children, directed by Lindsay Anderson and Guy Brenton and narrated by actor Richard Burton; Plus: a booklet featuring an essay by critic David Ehrenstein as well as reprinted by Sherwin and Anderson

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Malcolm McDowell	Mick
David Wood	Johnny
Richard Warwick	Wallace
Christine Noonan	the Girl
Rupert Webster	Bobby Philips
Robert Swann	Rowntree
Hugh Thomas	Denson
Peter Jeffrey	Headmaster
Mona Washbourne	Matron
Arthur Lowe	Mr. Kemp, Housemaster
Graham Crowden	History Master
Geoffrey Chater	Chaplain
Mary McLeod	Mrs. Kemp, Housemaster's Wife
Ben Aris	John Thomas, Undermaster
Anthony Nicholls	Gen. Denson
Michael Cadman	Fortinbras
Peter Sproule	Barnes
Charles Lloyd Pack	Classics Master
Tommy Godfrey	School Porter
John Garrie	Music Master
Guy Ross	Stephans
Robin Askwith	Keating
Philip Bagenal	Peanuts
Nicholas Page	Cox
Robert Yetzes	Fisher
David Griffin	Willens
Graham Sharman	Van Eyssen
Richard Tombleson	Baird
Richard Davies	Machin
Brian Pettifer	Biles
Michael Newport	Brunning
Charles Sturridge	Markland
Sean Bury	Jute
Martin Beaumont	Hunter
Ellis Dale	Motorcycle Salesman
Richard Everett	Pussy Graves
Simon Ward	Actor
Marc Wilkinson	Composer

Technical Credits

David Sherwin

Lindsay Anderson	Producer,Director
Michael Medwin	Producer
David Sherwin	Screenwriter
Miriam Brickman	Casting
Albert Finney	Producer
Roy Baird	Executive Producer
Christian Wangler	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Surreal and satiric, If... is both a withering critique of British society and a fantasy rooted in the spirit of schoolboy anarchy. Fairly controversial when it was released in Britain in 1968, the film still has the power to shock, not so much because of its sex and violence (fairly tame by today's standards) but because of the manner in which they are presented. Resembling a landlocked Lord of the Flies, If... remains most startling for its depiction of savagery, on the part of both society (represented by the school and its authorities) and the young men it produces. It is a casual, offhand savagery, seemingly as much a part of British society as tea and scones. Lindsay Anderson's ambiguous approach to the film's violence is consistent with the film's blackly satirical tone, mirroring the aim being taken at societies across the world at the time by their dissatisfied youth. If... can be seen as Anderson's metaphor for the changes occurring across the world in 1968, but it goes further than mere protest, culminating in a show of all-out rebellion that remains one of the high points of the cinema of youthful discontent.

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