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The best film ever made about school life; the rituals, the drudgery, the humiliation and ultimately the excitement. Anderson's masterpiece works on a number of levels, not least as one of the cinema's great pieces of surrealism. It's a state of the nation movie, a fantasy, an account of public school life told with an almost documentary-like precision and it's as fresh today as it was when it first appeared, (hard to believe that was almost 40 years ago or that Malcom McDowell was ever this young).

Using Jean Vigo's "Zero De Conduite" as a template, (it's not a remake), Anderson's movie is quintessentially youthful and so accurately does it depict its milieu as to appear almost arrogant. He handles revolution with a grandstanding authority and homosexual, (and heterosexual), schoolboy yearning more romantically than any other film I can think of, (Wallace's display in the gymnasium as blonde, beautiful, tousle-haired Bobby Phillips looks on is blissfully homo-erotic), and he does this with a masterly control of the medium. (His comments about financial restraints dictating the fluctuations between black-and-white and colour photography may well be true but the choices seem inspired, nevertheless and the great Miroslav Ondricek's camera-work is superb).

He was also a great actor's director, often working with many of the same actors both in theatre and in cinema and he extracts marvellous performances from the likes of Arthur Lowe, Peter Jeffrey, Mona Washborne and Geoffrey Chater representing the Establishment as well as pitch-perfect performances from David Wood, Richard Warwick, Rupert Webster, Robert Swann and Hugh Thomas, all new to cinema, as the students.

The film made Malcom McDowell a star and for a few short years, (here, in "O Lucky Man", as Alex in "A Clockwork Orange"), that star burned brightly before he sold out to Hollywood and his career began to flounder in a series of mediocre American movies, reaching a nadir with "Caligula". But his performance as Mick Travis is a marvel and both it and the film that first encapsulated it remain among the finest achievements in British cinema.

My word!

"If.." has always been a firm favourite of mine, particularly as I have been in much the same situation (minus B+W/Colour changes, and gun battles, naturally), and indeed still consider myself a hair rebel. It captures perfectly the horrors of public shool-The fawning, smarmy head-master, the rigors of cadet training and founder's day, it's all drawn from horrible reality.

Saw a late night showing yesterday, and on the cinema screen the fabulous direction and power of the photography- so still and unobtrusive, yet so iconic-becomes apparent. That final looped shot of Mick firing the brenn Gun is just stunning! I left the cinema feeling so goddamn moved!

At times the sheer 60s-ness, and random dialogue ("I like Johnny") can seem to undermine the viewing experience, but the spirit of bold rebellion which saturates this marvelous film wins you over. A favourite joke which I had never spotted before, is near the start, where the whips tick off a list that goes something like "Measles, tape worm, conformation class"..marvellous..

GO SEE!!

Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film If... is a beautiful film with a simple message, yet the director's touch and the performances take it to entirely different level.

If... takes place in all boys boarding school and stars Malcolm McDowell as

"Mick" (McDowell in his first screen role). Mick and his two friends feel

somewhat distant from their peers, school, and society. Their general attitude towards such things as sex, war, and authority could be call revolutionary. With surrealistic touches such as unexplained occurrences and changing between

color and black and white. Lindsay Anderson paints a vivid picture of "teenage alienation" before there was a term for such a thing. McDowell would later reprise his role of "Mick" in two other Anderson pictures O' Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital. A must see for fans of McDowell. Just a great film with a message that sparks positive, pro-active thinking. An important film that makes you remember to question authority instead complying to it rules. Sadly If... is not available on DVD at this time.

I was in a sort of daze for hours after seeing If...for the first time in 2017. A work of art? Certainly but also a poetic historical document. After all the film dates back to 1968. 1968! when things were really changing and youth was taking a step forward, reminding the older generation that we'll be suffering the consequences of your thoughtlessness. So move over or else. I remember my father despising this film, he call it, propaganda. Propaganda?Maybe that's why I never saw it, until now. I was really moved by the film. Malcolm McDowell is the perfect man to incarnate the revolution that was about to come. It also made me look for all of Lindsay Anderson films - Just half a dozen feature films but my God! What an extraordinary director.

Made in 1968, this film still made me shiver even though I started at public school in 1977. Things had changed somewhat by then, but not beyond recognition, and for sure I felt powerful echoes in this movie. By the time I left, the country was steeped in Thatcherism, and the style of self advancement that came with it was replacing the old guard watchers of 'If....' would recognise. The housemaster and headboy were 2 characters I can especially recall, but there are flashes of others in many of the characters.

When you see this film, see it as a historical satire, with first the historical atmosphere of a public school being accurately recreated, then second the satire taking form just in time to administer the purgative judgement of the surreal denouement.

There. Spoken like a public schoolboy.