For today’s final entry in our series of Back to School reviews, let’s close out the 60s by taking a look at a 1968 British film. Directed by Lindsay Anderson, if… not only won the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film (now known as the Palme d’Or) at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival but it also featured the film debut of future icon Malcolm McDowell.
if… takes place at a British public school (or, as we would call it here in the States, a private school) that is mired in a long tradition of conformity and oppression. For roughly the first half of the film, we see how the school works. The teachers are stern and out-of-touch. The headmaster (Peter Jeffrey) considers himself to be something of a reformer and is clueless as to just how little respect the students have for him. Discipline is maintained by the Whips,sadistic upperclassmen who revel in their power and who spend most of their time speculating about which one of them will claim 13 year-old Bobby Phillips (Rupert Webster) as his own. Three students — Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), Johnny (David Wood), and Wallace (Richard Warwick) — are considered to be nonconformists and soon find themselves being targeted by both the school’s faculty and the Whips. During this first half, the film plays out as harsh but relatively realistic.
And then something happens.
About 45 minutes into the film, if… starts to grow increasingly more and more surreal. In a scene that plays out in languid, sensual slow motion, the otherwise dim-witted Wallace gracefully exercises on a high bar while an entranced Bobby Phillips watches. When Rowntree and his fellow whips decide to punish Mick, Johnny, and Wallace with a particularly brutal caning, the disturbing sound of it echoes throughout the entire school. During a war game, Mick fires an automatic rifle full of blanks at the chaplain and is subsequently forced to apologize while the chaplain sits up in a drawer kept in the headmaster’s office. Mrs. Kemp, the wife of the housemaster, wanders naked through the dormitory. Perhaps most famously, the film goes from randomly being in color to black-and-white and then back again, all adding to the movie’s dreamlike feel.
Perhaps most importantly, Johnny and Mick manage to sneak off campus and spend a day roaming around the city. After they steal a motorcycle from a showroom, they stop at a cafe where they are served coffee by a character known only as the Girl (Christine Noonan). The Girl tells Mick that sometimes she’s a tiger and soon, they are wrestling naked on the floor while Johnny sits in a corner booth and drinks his coffee. Later, when Mick returns to the school, he looks through a telescope and sees the Girl staring back at him and waving.
And finally, the Girl shows up while Mick, Johnny, Wallace, and Bobby are cleaning out a storeroom as a part of their punishment for scaring the chaplain. Among the dusty shelves, they find not only a jar containing a fetus but a cache of weapons as well. This leads to the film’s famous conclusion, a shocking act of violence that, in the 60s, was probably viewed as a show of solidarity with rebellious youth everywhere but, when seen in this time and age, draws disturbing parallels with the American tradition of school shootings.
Seen today, if… remains a surprisingly potent celebration of rebellion and a harsh condemnation of conformist society. Occasionally pretentious in that wonderful way that only a British film made in 1968 could be, if… is also a surprisingly stinging satire that doesn’t leave anyone — even the film’s heroes — untouched. Perhaps best of all, if… is also the film debut of Malcolm McDowell and he gives a strong performance here. It’s easy to understand why, after seeing if…, Stanley Kubrick cast McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. Interestingly enough, despite if’s apocalyptic ending, McDowell would play Mick Travis twice more, in Anderson’s O Lucky Man, a film that is even more surreal than if…, and in Britannia Hospital.
Tomorrow, we’ll continue our journey back to school by taking a trip to the 70s!
