if... (1968)

dir. Lindsay Anderson
writ. David Sherwin (screenplay), David Sherwin & John Howlett (script "Crusaders" that screenplay was based upon)
feat. Malcolm McDowell, David Wood, Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan

This story of a strict British private school smacks of Dickens and Lean via Billy Liar with a hint of the yet-to-come A Clockwork Orange, a touch of fantasy escapism and rebellious violence spawned by abusive schoolmasters and restricted adolescence. Though it drifts toward the suggestion that creativity may be provoked, if sporadically and explosively, by the attempt to control and inhibit youngsters, whenever this notion is raised, it is all too briefly nurtured, returning the film to the tired old tropes of the lash and egotistical authorities.

While there is a degree of satisfaction in seeing McDowell in a role that grooms him for A Clockwork Orange, and the film is likely a landmark in shock value and surely loaded with a few delightfully absurd flights of fancy, it doesn't age well, too closely tied to the lifelessness enforced by its power wielding elite.