If…. (1968) – 3/5

What if…?

„If….“ is a British English-language (if we include very minor inclusions of Latin) movie from 1968, which means that this one has its 55th anniversary this year already, truly old movie we got here. It runs for slightly over 110 minutes, so does not stay clearly under the two-hour mark. It is a relatively long film, but not extremely long. The director was Lindsay Anderson, a male despite the name, and this film here is definitely a contender for his most famous, especially if we are looking the stuff he directed. Here and there, you also found him acting, like in the Oscar winner for Best Picture „Chariots of Fire“. The majority of his credits are from non-acting though. He is not an auteur, so the screenplay was developed by David Sherwin and John Howlett, who were both born in the early 1940s, which means they weren’t even 30 when they worked on this movie here, but sadly, they are both no longer with us. The BAFTA nomination for this film only went to Sherwin, so he was probably the driving force here, also the slightly older from the duo. The fact that Anderson is no longer with us either is no surprise as he would have turned 100 this year. In 2023 I mean. I should maybe add that, just in case you are reading my review here a bit delayed. He was also nominated for a BAFTA, which made this film surely one of his biggest successes, but what stood out even more in terms of awards recognition is the fact that he won the Palme d’Or in 1969, so the big prize at the perhaps biggest film festival of the planet. At least it is right now. I am not sure, if it was equally lauded back then, but the tradition is rich of course. This movie was also nominated for a Golden Globe in a category that longer exists and the National Society of Film Critics (yep, they existed back then already too) nominated the film for its cinematography and that is pretty much all awards-wise, at least according to imdb.

As for the cast, the one name that stands out here is of course Malcolm McDowell. He turns 80 this year, which means that back then he was (under) 25 and you can surely say that his portrayal here must have helped him in getting the lead role in „A Clockwork Orange“ three years later. His characters in both films are a great deal about authority and standing up against it in criminal ways even. To an extent, you can maybe call McDowell the closest Britain had to an equivalent to James Deal, even if he was rolling a decade earlier or so. I cannot say too much about the other cast members here, they are mostly Brits and for almost every single one of them, this film here is their most known career effort I suppose. The protagonist had two friends here and one of the actors is still alive and the other is dead and gone for quite a while. The latter is sadly also true for one of the not many female characters with screen time here and this would be Catherina Noonan. She was quite pretty though. You could never be sure what direction her character would be heading when she was introduced, but the fact that she not only joined the gang, but took part even in the massacre at the end was a bit surprising, if not exaggerated. We did not really see her transform into such a role, but maybe she also just did it because she was madly in love and bored with her life before meeting the boys. One interesting thing is surely that McDowell was much older than his character and he was even a few years older than the older characters in this film who keep punishing him.

Those scenes were also the ones that stayed in the mind the most, the one that included violence one way or another. The big example is of course the shooting in the end, but I am also referring to the beating that fueled the protagonist’s hate. I am also talking about a dialogue between the boys during which they talk about the most gruesome/painful ways to die and there it stayed especially in the mind for me what a moth can do when it gets in your ear, in your head. The violence happening to the protagonist gets basically worse and heavier the longer the film goes. We also have the example of the cold-shower scene, which was surely unpleasant, but not really incredibly torturing yet. What also may have brought out the aggressions in the initial victims is that they, especially McDowell’s character, are not really told what it was exactly that they did wrong. They are only told that they do not respect authority. And also their violence as a response gets worse. The degree of it. You could think that the moment when this instructor is shot out there in the green or forest would have been an actual killing, but no, they saved the „best“ for last. And their targets also fire back and it becomes just utter chaos everywhere. I still wonder how they got the guns. In this scene at the end, you could initially think that they would not show the violence in a graphic fashion as we only saw bodies on the ground there initially, but yeah, then there is one character being shot in the head and more graphic depiction of violence, so they surely eventually did not go easy on everybody in the audience. But why would they? Only at the beginning they do. I just mentioned the first shooting that wasn’t really an actual shooting, but this also resulted in one of the rare comedic moments the film had, like when the victim there who got hit by blanks or so rose like a vampire almost from this drawer. Kinda hilarious moment, also how he gets back in.

On the aspiring side, in terms of this film, you can of course mention the loyalty between the boys. They became blood brothers really stuck together, even if what they had in mind was of course really vicious. But when they are beaten at the gym and one is finished and returns to the others, they comfort each other knowing about the pain, even if they try their best to hide these signs of weakness. McDowell’s character then got hit ten times and not just four times like the other two and his face expression afterwards was quite telling. What were the words we heard on at least one occasion? Death to the oppressor or something like that. This film is also pretty structured. You can see this in the cast list as the actors do not only have the names of their characters listed, but also in a way the group that they belong to. It was also structured in terms of chapters and there is one word for each chapter as we are getting closer to the final escalation. At the beginning, the chapters‘ names are still very much on the harmless side. The beginning was also fairly memorable, not only because of how McDowell’s character enters the movie and we do not see his face, but was he called Guy Fawkes or something? Fitting reference then with the ending. By the way, the one aspect we never really find out anything about is the parents of the students or you could almost call them inmates. We only know that long hair is not welcome and there needs to be a certain movement speed. But what I was also even more referring to when mentioning the beginning of the film was the brief moment with the very young boy who was lost there and did not know where he should go or where he belonged, so he just runs after the others eventually. But he does not only get no help from the ones he is asking, but he is even told that he is not allowed to start a conversation with the older students. This scene alone made it very obvious that the facility where all the action takes place here is not a place where you would want to reside.

But the film is one you want to watch I guess. Even if it is by no means a forgotten movie, I was a bit surprised that the room was indeed relatively packed as I did not expect so many coming to see it, especially in the later afternoon on a weekday, but it’s nice. Always cool to see older films getting the appreciation. I personally struggled with the film for a while, not only the seemingly random switching between black-and-white segments and color scenes, but I especially struggled for quite some time after the aforementioned beginning, but the movie got better eventually and even if I am not the biggest fan of the showy ending here, I give it a thumbs-up and positive recommendation as a whole. It was a close call though and I think the attention from the Cannes Film festival and maybe also the one from the BAFTAs is clearly exaggerated. Seeing this film once is enough, no matter if small screen or movie theater. Go for it and maybe you will also enjoy the absurdities in an almost comedic fashion the way I did, like when one character is watching from sitting in a bathtub and using his power there or how very early on one character tells another to sit on the toilet for him briefly, so he will have it warm afterwards when he goes to the toilet briefly afterwards. This was kinda absurd, but also showed in a way here that it was all about depictions of power, maybe to a sadistic extent even, and that the abuse was not just physical, but also psychological, even if the abusers are basically also just students and have their superior. In Germany, we have a saying that people like to lick the feet of those above them and kick those below them. This was surely the case back then already too as we see in this film and it is kinda sad that not much has changed in over half a century since this film got made. That is really all now though. Go see this film.