DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Lindsay Anderson
Starring Malcom McDowell, David Wood, Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan
Release date Out now

A schoolboy revolt in 1960s Britain is full of deeper meanings…

Initially ignored by its distributor, Lindsay Anderson’s fantasy satire If.... was the making of both the director and newcomer lead actor Malcolm McDowell. On the surface, this (then very timely) film may appear to be a simple critique of the UK’s public school system in the 1960s. But scratch the surface and it can be read as a state-of-the-nation report for the whole country (then and now), a critique of the outmoded class system, a scream of rage against any kind of authority and even a meditation on the nature of reality itself.

McDowell makes a unique film entrance, with his face covered in a scarf serving to accentuate his mysteriousness and simultaneously hiding his holiday-grown revolutionary’s moustache. Neither one of the prefects nor a new pupil in the school, McDowell’s naturally truculent student (and his hangers on) is caught in the middle – with responsibilities, but no authority.

Scriptwriter David Sherwin (only 24 at the time) introduces several surreal touches that director Anderson (although often seen as a realist filmmaker) was more than happy to go with. An entire sequence, in which a motorbike excursion to a remote café leads to an encounter with a mysterious, seemingly sexually available, woman (Noonan), may or may not have actually taken place at all. It’s put together with a kind of lyricism that is mostly missing from the school-set scenes, until the notorious revolutionary climax in which McDowell and his gang enact a (bloodless, despite the machine guns) revolution.

It’s this climax – which doesn’t really resolve anything, but simply brings the film to an end – that got the film talked about at the time and remembered for many years afterwards. Anderson was so amused by the resulting controversy that he produced a poster for the movie featuring both the good and bad reviews that asked prospective viewers, “Which side will you be on?”

It’s the magical realist content of the film that puts If.... firmly in the fantasy genre. There are no spaceships or vampires, but the movie is as unreal as they come. The seemingly random mixing of black-and-white and colour sequences only serves to further heighten the strangeness of the movie’s atmosphere.

This long-awaited DVD version presents a crisp new transfer of the film, supported by an excellent TV cast-and-crew reunion (42 minutes) that features Sherwin, McDowell (on video) and Anderson (in 1985 archive interview footage), along with others. It’s a great extra that gets to the heart of the movie through the recollections of those that were there.

There’s an edited commentary featuring McDowell and film critic David Robinson and a curious, though very intelligent, video interview with actor Graham Crowden (14 minutes) who recalls working on the movie. An additional bonus is the unrelated Anderson short Thursday’s Children (22 minutes) from 1954, about a school for the deaf. While it’s an Oscar-winning documentary, it’s no more than a curio in this context. Brian J. Robb

VERDICT: 8/10
A classic class war movie from the troubled late-1960s which has more than its fair share of fantasy and magical realist touches. Roll on O, Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital, which see McDowell and Anderson re-teamed in more state-of-the-nation satires for the 1970s and 1980s!