Openly gay director Lindsay Anderson, who had launched Richard Harris’s career with This Sporting Life (1963), turned away from the gritty realism of Kitchen Sink Cinema to deliver the elite British public school exposé If…. (1968). The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and remains a landmark of satirical drama, charting rebellion within a boys’ boarding school where non-conformist students, led by Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell, in his debut), rise against oppressive traditions and authority, culminating in a surreal and violent insurrection – is it real or imagined?
The boys are persecuted by the “Whips” (senior prefects), who exploit and abuse younger students through the rigid traditions of the school and the wider British establishment. These include fagging—a system in which junior boys serve as personal attendants to seniors, performing tasks such as cleaning shoes, making tea, running errands, preparing meals, tidying rooms, and even warming toilet seats—as well as canings and other forms of humiliation. Authority figures, from the headmaster to the housemasters, are portrayed as detached, complicit, or absurdly incompetent. After enduring a ferocious punishment, Mick and his fellow “Crusaders” resolve to fight back. Their revolt erupts during a ceremonial gathering of parents and staff, where the boys unleash a violent armed insurrection. The surreal finale deliberately blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, leaving viewers uncertain whether the rebellion is literal or symbolic.
Alternating between color and black and white, the film achieves a dreamlike quality that contrasts with the horrors unfolding on screen. Yet Anderson also threads in humor and tenderness, most notably in the sweet, understated love story between Wallace and Bobby, who share kisses and occasionally a bed. If…. not only marked the debut of Malcolm McDowell but also cemented Anderson’s reputation as a daring chronicler of British institutions and their discontents.
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