Review of if.... (1968) by Chris B — 30 Nov 2013

Set in a British independent boys boarding school in the late 1960s, Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) is one of three non-conformist boys among the returning class and with a panache for being cocky and ready to revolt toward his oppressors as much as possible. 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. One day, having sneaked off campus and into 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. Mick's group of friends clashes constantly with the school authorities and they become 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. Mick and his friends then discover a cache of automatic weapons at the college, and they finally revolt with power against the establishment...

Widely regarded as one of the films that captured the great counterculture movement of the late 60s, shooting actually began several months before one of the most significant events of that movement - the student riots in Paris in May 1968. "if...." won the Palme d'Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival. Paramount hated the film when they saw it and tried to dump it from cinemas. However, one of their tentpole films, Barbarella (1968), turned out to be a spectacular flop so they needed to replace it in cinemas with something else. Reluctantly, they wheeled out "If..." and were astonished to see it turn into a big critical and commercial success. Contrary to the story that says some scenes of the film are in black-and-white instead of color because the production company was running short of money and saved money by having some scenes processed in monochrome, according to interviews with Malcolm McDowell, Lindsay Anderson and the cameraman, they first shot the scenes in the school chapel in monochrome because they had to use natural light that came in through the big stained-glass window, requiring high-speed film. The high-speed color stock they tested was very grainy and the constantly-shifting color values due to the angle of the light through the stained glass made it impossible to color-correct, as well. So they decided to shoot those scenes in monochrome, and, when he saw the dailies, Anderson liked the way that it "broke up the surface of the film", and decided to insert other monochrome scenes more or less at random, to help disorient the viewer as the film slipped from realism to fantasy. McDowell's performance in if.... caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick, who subsequently cast him in his 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange.[citation needed] Additionally, McDowell used his performance in if.... in his inspiration for the Clockwork Orange protagonist, Alexander DeLarge. Having been given the script by Kubrick, McDowell was unsure on how he would play the part of Alex, and so he contacted Lindsay Anderson, asking for advice. McDowell relates the story: Anyway, he said 'Malcolm, this is how you play the part: there is a scene of you, a close-up in if...., where you open the doors to the gymnasium, to be beaten. You get a close-up.' I said 'that's right.' He said 'do you remember...' I said 'yes. I smiled.' He said 'that's right. You gave them that smile. That sort of ironic smile,' he said 'and that's how you play Alex.' And I went 'my god, that's brilliant. That's brilliant.' That's all I needed and that was enough, and that is a brilliant piece of direction for an actor. "if...." has as well been on my must see list forever and it was a treat to see this anti establishment film. Well made, well acted and with a script anyone can relate to in several ways in terms of trying to break away from the establishment. Malcolm McDowell is in form in his first role and you can see a resemblance to his character Alexander DeLarge in "A Clockwork Orange" which he made a few years later. I can only imagine how it was perceived in England from the boarding schools. We´ve had some recent and fresh severe bullying events at a well known boarding school here in Sweden, so this sort of power balance still exist within this environment. "if...." is as important today as it was in 1968.