if.... (1968)

if.... is a 1968 British drama film produced and directed by Lindsay Anderson satirising English public school life. Famous for its depiction of a savage insurrection at a fictitious boys boarding school, the X certificate film was made at the time of the May 1968 protests in France by a director strongly associated with the 1960s counterculture.

The film stars Malcolm McDowell in his first screen role and his first appearance as Anderson's "everyman" character Mick Travis. Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, David Wood, and Robert Swann also star.


if.... won the Palme d'Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival. In 2004, the magazine Total Film named it the sixteenth greatest British film of all time.

Synopsis

Set in a British public school (a fee-paying boarding school) in the late 1960s, the film opens as the pupils return for a new term. Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), Wallace (Richard Warwick), and Johnny (David Wood) are three non-conformist boys in the lower sixth form (the penultimate year). They are watched and persecuted by the "Whips", upper sixth formers given authority as prefects over the other boys, while younger boys (whom the prefects degradingly call "Scum") are made to "fag" (act as personal servants) for the Whips.

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