Lindsay Anderson’s school-rebellion drama is angry, funny and observant, with Malcolm McDowell giving its defiance a persuasive face. The surreal passages sometimes lose force, but the bullying and institutional absurdity remain sharply drawn.
if…. is a funny, angry school film worth seeing for how closely Lindsay Anderson watches the people in charge. Its schoolboys’ revolt has force because the everyday arrangements already seem unreasonable, even before the film starts taking liberties with reality. The English public school gives Anderson a place where authority is everywhere and almost nobody needs to justify exercising it. He gets considerable comedy from that confidence, then makes us sit with the bullying it permits.
Malcolm McDowell’s Mick Travis is the right boy to put in that environment: his contempt makes submission seem difficult even when resistance looks foolish. McDowell gives the anger enough humour to keep Mick from becoming a solemn advertisement for youth, and enough arrogance to stop him being merely endearing. We enjoy his insolence without needing to approve of every thought behind it. The performance leaves room for the possibility that an angry pupil can see the adults clearly and still know little about what should replace them.
We were angrier than we expected at the boys’ bullying of one another, because Anderson makes it look like an accepted part of their education. The cruelty has room to grow inside the school’s routines, and its familiarity makes it harder to dismiss as the work of a few unusually unpleasant people. David Sherwin’s screenplay is good at tracing how obedience and aggression can be taught together. The humour remains uncomfortable because the institution is so practised at treating its own absurdities seriously.
Miroslav Ondříček’s cinematography gives the school a convincing everyday presence, which matters when Anderson starts departing from ordinary behaviour. We believe in the place sufficiently to feel the disturbance when realism no longer holds. Jocelyn Herbert’s production design contributes to that sense of an institution thoroughly accustomed to itself; the surroundings make the rules feel established before anybody has to explain them. The school remains recognisable even when the behaviour becomes strange.
David Gladwell’s editing has the awkward job of joining close observation to surreal episodes without making either feel like a separate film. The shifts can be bracing, and we like Anderson’s reluctance to supply an explanation each time ordinary logic slips. Marc Wilkinson’s music deepens our unease about the school, helping the comedy remain uncomfortable. At its most assured, the film can make the same behaviour seem ridiculous and threatening without having to announce a change of mood.
The surreal passages are also where the film becomes less convincing. Some expand our sense of what might happen within this school, but others seem to excuse Anderson from being as precise as he is about its ordinary cruelties. The later stretches occasionally become slack when they need the pressure built by the earlier observations. Those scenes held our attention less firmly than the school routines.
School rebellion films have an easy route to applause: make the adults monstrous and let the pupils enjoy being right. Anderson gives us enough of the boys’ arrogance to make that comfort difficult, although his handling of the adults is sometimes broad. What distinguishes if…. within the genre is the attention paid to the everyday business of getting people to obey, long before rebellion offers any release. Give it an evening when there is time to disagree about it afterwards.
