If….
Crackling with anarchistic fervour, Lindsay Anderson’s assault on English traditionalism still surprises over forty years after its initial release. One of the definitive works of the late 1960s, its measured buildup to the blackly comic assault occurring in its final minutes exposes the “countercultural” tendencies of contemporaneous films like Easy Rider as exercises in unfocused hedonism. And the so-called “sexual frankness” of the New Hollywood renaissance is revealed as just so much heteronormative prudery next to If….’s explicit homoeroticism. Situating queerness as an instrumental component of the youthful overturning of a moribund class system (the gymnastics sequence is particularly memorable), If…. anticipates New Queer Cinema’s explosive pop politics. Avoiding the easy polemics of “conservative teachers” vs. “liberated students,” Anderson’s masterstroke is to situate the senior prefects – the abusive Whips – as the principal antagonists, demonstrating how the sins of the Fathers are so readily taken up by apt pupils. It’s easy to appreciate how Malcolm McDowell’s cocksure smirk – held even as he anticipates a lashing – served as the performative kernel of his turn as a dandyish thug in A Clockwork Orange. But there’s purposeful steel in his impudence, evident in the film’s powerful final closeup of McDowell machine-gunning the figureheads of a tyrannical education system.
Rating: * * * *
