Why If… remains one of the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary British films ever made

One of the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary British films ever made, both in terms of its poet­ic dis­cor­dance and as an anar­chic state­ment at the very heart of tra­di­tion­al British soci­ety, If… has stood as a sym­bol of rebel­lion for gen­er­a­tions of young peo­ple for 50 years.

In the late ​’50s and ear­ly ​’60s, direc­tor Lind­say Ander­son was at the heart of the British New Wave, a peri­od defined by films based large­ly on the nov­els and plays of work­ing-class writ­ers like Alan Sil­li­toe, She­lagh Delaney and John Osborne explor­ing the dis­il­lu­sion­ment and mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of work­ing-class youth. Ander­son was at the helm for 1963’s This Sport­ing Life, based on the David Storey nov­el of the same name, which fol­lows the trau­mat­ic psy­che of a York­shire Rug­by League play­er. But it is If… for which Ander­son is best remembered.

In its expo­si­tion of the inner-work­ings of British school life, the film func­tions as a damn­ing crit­i­cism of the old Eng­lish pub­lic school sys­tem as a metaphor for British soci­ety and its class sys­tem. In a tiered social sys­tem, ruled over by a group of dom­i­neer­ing pre­fect-like old­er boys known as the ​‘Whips’, three rev­o­lu­tion obsessed rebels, led by Mal­colm McDowell’s Mick Travis begin to resist. They suf­fer the con­se­quences of their actions, includ­ing bru­tal and over-exces­sive cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, but take their final revenge on find­ing a huge stash of guns in an old store room, and in an increas­ing­ly sur­re­al cli­max fire upon teach­ers and par­ents from the rooftops dur­ing a Founders’ Day celebration.

It’s a film about vio­lent insur­rec­tion, fan­ta­sy and the rebel­lious and rev­o­lu­tion­ary nature of sex and love that rep­re­sent­ed an Eng­lish inter­pre­ta­tion of the wave of coun­ter­cul­tur­al move­ments build­ing through­out the world dur­ing the lat­ter stages of the 1960s.

The fin­ish­ing touch­es were in fact being made to David Sherwin’s screen­play at the same time as the mass stu­dent protests in Paris, and Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, as well as the ongo­ing and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly per­ilous Viet­nam War. In the film, Travis and his friends often sit in a den-like room, which is cov­ered in pic­tures of rev­o­lu­tion­ary sym­bols: Chair­man Mao, Che Gue­vara and sol­diers bur­dened with machine guns. Their con­ver­sa­tions are not spe­cif­ic to the pol­i­tics of their sit­u­a­tion but reflect instead the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of these glob­al move­ments with the gen­er­al rhetoric of rev­o­lu­tion: ​“Death to the oppres­sor. Resis­tance. Lib­er­ty”. If… is not just a film about an Eng­lish pub­lic school; it is oppres­sors and oppressed, resis­tance and retal­i­a­tion and life and death.

The film won the Palme d’Or and became McDowell’s break-out role, report­ed­ly land­ing him his part in A Clock­work Orange. He went on to play Mick Travis in two more of Anderson’s films, O Lucky Man! and Bri­tan­nia Hos­pi­tal, both par­tial-sequels to If… which share its chaot­ic and fan­tas­ti­cal style. If… con­tin­ues to res­onate as a piece of anti-estab­lish­ment art, in its actu­al­i­sa­tion of rebel­lion against oppres­sive sys­tems, as well as its con­tex­tu­al­i­sa­tion of rev­o­lu­tion­ary action in a British setting.

Beyond the last­ing sym­bol­ic pow­er of the sight of Travis on the roof of the school fir­ing at the teach­ers and upper-class par­ents, the film is more pro­gres­sive in its approach to sex. In an atmos­phere of intense prud­ish­ness, sex is depict­ed as a rad­i­cal and dar­ing expres­sion of free­dom, both for Travis and his rela­tion­ship with a local wait­ress, and his fel­low rebel, Wal­lace who pur­sues a homo­sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with anoth­er pupil dur­ing the course of the film. The sys­tem under which they live effec­tive­ly denies the rebels of the excite­ment of bur­geon­ing youth. Their rebel­lion is there­fore not child­ish dis­obe­di­ence but a bid to be free in the way that they live their lives.

If… moves flu­id­ly between fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty – at times with­out warn­ing, or expla­na­tion. At one moment Mick bay­o­nets the chap­lain to death; the next he appears unharmed from a draw­er in the headmaster’s office. Ander­son arbi­trar­i­ly puts large por­tions of the film in black and white and inserts unex­plained fan­tas­ti­cal ele­ments through­out mak­ing you ques­tion whether any­thing that is hap­pen­ing is real or mere­ly the wild imag­in­ings of rev­o­lu­tion-obsessed teenagers.

This is cer­tain­ly the case in a scene that details a rare trip out of the con­fines of the school. Travis and his friend and fel­low rebel John­ny walk into a café at which an unnamed woman played by Chris­tine Noo­nan works. Mick stirs his tea provoca­tive­ly (as Eng­lish a rebel­lion as any), before she approach­es him, sizes him up and says, ​“Some­times I stand in front of the mir­ror and my eyes get big­ger and big­ger. I’m like a tiger. I like tigers.” The two begin claw­ing at each oth­er like wild ani­mals, and as they grap­ple and roll around the floor, shots of them naked are inter­spersed. Using exper­i­men­tal and sur­re­al­ist devices, Ander­son man­ages to explore both the real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, and what lies beneath: the ani­mal­is­tic ener­gy of the teenage libido.