If.… is the first in direc­tor Lind­say Anderson’s tril­ogy of films fea­tur­ing Mal­colm McDow­ell as the Mick Travis, whose mis­ad­ven­tures con­tinue in O Lucky Man! and Bri­tan­nia Hos­pi­tal. Every­thing I read about the tril­ogy repeats the same word to descibe Travis: “every­man.” On the evi­dence, I take this to mean Travis is a blank slate, a shape­less per­son pushed and molded by the forces of soci­ety about him. If.… begins with the epi­gram “Wis­dom is the prin­ci­pal thing; there­fore get wis­dom; and with all thy get­ting, get under­stand­ing” from The Book of Proverbs, but an even bet­ter state­ment of the film’s themes is spo­ken my Travis him­self: “When do we live? That’s what I want to know.”

The ini­tially real­is­tic por­trayal of life at a British pub­lic school, filmed at Chel­tenham Col­lege but referred to sim­ply as “Col­lege”, includes frank depic­tions of the cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment and homo­sex­u­al­ity (mostly repressed but in one case, gen­uine young love). The pupils’ lives are so reg­i­mented and ordered that even vir­tu­ous activ­i­ties such as study­ing are for­bid­den if not con­ducted at the proper time and place. Most of the ram­pant cru­elty and capri­cious­ness comes from Whips (the senior class, with priv­i­leges) and is sanc­tioned, or rather, will­fully ignored by the aloof adult fac­ulty. It becomes clear the school is satir­i­cal micro­cosm of the British class soci­ety: a self-perpetuating sys­tem in which the young under­class­men “Scum” even­tu­ally grow into the roles of the oppressors.

I think I’ll call you Mini-Malcolm

Much of the stu­dents’ time is pre­oc­cu­pied with para­mil­i­tary war games couched in reli­gion. As the school chap­lain admon­ishes them, “Jesus is your com­mand­ing offi­cer.” The ser­mon also instructs that deser­tion is the worst wartime crime, and as all Chris­tians are born with orig­i­nal sin, all are like­wise desert­ers. Dur­ing one war game, Travis and friends delib­er­ately shoot live rounds at their own com­rades. Curi­ously, the head­mas­ter mildly scolds them as if they had com­mit­ted an infrac­tion as naughty as nip­ping at the com­mu­nal wine. But the first irrefutable instance of the film’s turn towards sur­re­al­ity is when the head­mas­ter pro­duces a fac­ulty mem­ber from within a cup­board drawer for whom Travis to apologize.

From this point on, it is clear at least some of Travis’ expe­ri­ences are fan­tasy. And what do teenage boys fan­ta­size about but hook­ing up with hot girls and vio­lently lash­ing out at ene­mies? He beds a beau­ti­ful wait­ress (Chris­tine Noo­nan) in a vio­lently ani­mal­is­tic cou­pling, who might very well be another fig­ment of his imag­i­na­tion. Together they uncover a cache of weapons and pick­led med­ical anom­alies in the school base­ment (his sub­con­scious?), includ­ing a grotesque human fetus. Travis’ anar­chic ado­les­cent fan­tasies cli­max with a mas­sive school shoot­ing dur­ing a nau­se­at­ingly patri­otic fes­ti­val hon­or­ing The Cru­sades. Unlike the con­sid­er­ably more tragic school shoot­ings typ­i­cal to films made in an era of actual teen mas­sacres like Columbine (in films as diverse as Ele­phant, Empire Falls, and The Bas­ket­ball Diaries), Travis’ war is a com­i­cally car­ni­va­lesque affair and the con­se­quences fall offscreen.

Mmmf mmmmf mmff mmmmfff.…

Mis­cel­lany:

• The oth­er­wise spiffy Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion DVD edi­tion appears to be a cen­sored cut, not the X-rated full ver­sion orig­i­nally screened in some parts of the world.

• The assis­tant direc­tor was Steven Frears, who went on to direct Dan­ger­ous Liaisons, High Fidelity, and The Queen. In the Cri­te­rion DVD bonus fea­tures, Frears states that If.… was filmed at the same time as the Paris Riots in 1968, lend­ing pow­er­ful imme­di­acy to the theme of vio­lent stu­dent rebellion.

• The film alter­nates between black & white and color film stock. There are con­flict­ing expla­na­tions accord­ing to Wikipedia, but the pri­mary moti­va­tions seemed to have been that of bud­get and time (black & white film tak­ing less time to light for). Ander­son, how­ever, liked the “tex­ture” and con­tin­ued to use the device. It is appar­ently not to be under­stood to delin­eate real­ity vs. fantasy.

• Mick repeat­edly plays the music “Sanc­tus” from Missa Luba, an African-tinged ver­sion of the Latin Mass. Dif­fi­cult for mod­ern ears to believe, but it was a hit sin­gle at the time. (also from Wikipedia)

• Full of inter­est­ing tid­bits, Wikipedia also cites a visual allu­sion to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger in McDowell’s first appear­ance, show­cas­ing his instantly rec­og­niz­able eyes.

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Must read: every­thing you could pos­si­bly want to know about If.… from MalcolmMcDowell.net

Offi­cial movie site: www.lindsayanderson.com/if.html

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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