if.... is a 1968 British drama film produced and directed by Lindsay
Anderson satirising English public school life. Famous for its depiction
of a savage insurrection at a public school or boarding school, the
film is associated with the 1960s counterculture movement because it was
filmed by a long-standing cIounter-culture director at the time of the
student uprisings in Paris in May 1968. It includes controversial
statements, such as: "There's no such thing as a wrong war. Violence and
revolution are the only pure acts". It features surrealist sequences
throughout the film. Upon release in the UK, it received an X
certificate. The film stars Malcolm McDowell in his first screen role
and his first appearance as Anderson's "everyman" character Mick Travis.
Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, David Wood, and Robert Swann also
star, and Rupert Webster is featured as the young boy Bobby Phillips.
if.... won the Palme d'Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival. In 2004, the
magazine Total Film named it the sixteenth greatest British film of all
time. The Criterion Collection released the DVD on 19 June 2007.
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(Thanx Stephen!)
Fantastic film!
ReplyDeleteAnderson was very good at confusing the post mods and the post structuralists - the black and white sequences were ripe for critique and semiotic analysis - he claimed he shot in b/w due to lack of funds....
ReplyDeleteThis inspired two others; 'O Lucky Man' and the excellent but rarely seen 'Britania Hospital' (shot round the corner from where I used to live in Friern Barnet at the incredibly cinemagenic Friern Barnet Mental Assylum, a beautiful Victorian assylum with a main corridor that was the longest in Britain (3 quarters of a mile or someting!). Thatcher's mob sold it off to one of their mates and it was turned into 'Luxury Apartments'. Bah.
Fucking wicked film, though; as were all in that trilogy.
Thanks for the associative memory.
roy (budding ;))
2rr/
ReplyDeleteHe was good at that and they are all seriously great films. I have been to Friern Barnet Asylum back in the 70's, had a friend who worked up there and I lived up in Muswell Hill so caught bus (134?) to meet up with her. I also was lucky enough to meet Lyndsey W a number of times. My g/f's brother (also Lyndsey) was his godson and he had worked with her dad on films.
Regards/