If....

Lindsay Anderson, UK, 1962, 106 minutes

So, you're tired of lectures, essays are already looming, and you ask yourself why, oh why did you choose to come to university? Well, perhaps this film can show you that your lot could be much worse! Everyone's favourite droog Malcolm McDowell is an unruly student at a boarding school; he and his friends keep going off on flights of fancy and facing the punishments that follow. As the film progresses, the infractions get worse, the punishments more corporal and the final scene? Well, in the 1960s, they didn't know that some Denver school kids would feel the same way forty years on... and they could've blamed Lindsay Anderson instead of Marilyn Manson...

If.... is a surprisingly arty film, with switches between colour and monochrome throughout the picture. Is there a reason for this? Perhaps, but what really happened was that they couldn't afford to shoot it all in colour! One of the best films of the 1960s, says I (of course, I had to write and essay on it for my A-level media studies); enjoyable and you can feel the constriction of a public school life. Watch it, then count your blessings when you go to the bar afterwards.

Review by Niko Ovenden
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2003