Watch if.... For Free

Touches You

Just what I expected

Good concept, poorly executed.

Fresh and Exciting

If is one of those movies where the story doesn't matter, its the characters. Before clockwork orange, this is Micheal McDowell's film debut that skyrocketed his career. This movie has without a doubt, THE BEST actors for a movie with no story. Even the child actors are great. they are like young adults. If has a great settings, great music, (though there's little background) and amazing picture quality of its time. for a film that's made in 1968, it looks like it was made in 1985! Hell, maybe in the early 1990s if the hairstyles weren't dated. as this movie has great moments, there's two things i didn't like. One is the random naked lady that walked around a hallway. it was unnecessary and didn't need to be put. Another part was the black and white moments. there's scenes were the movies turns into a black and white film to set the mood. its cool in some scenes, but in other scenes like where the students are talking to each other, it appears again, and it was unnecessary. those are my only problems. If is definitely not made for everybody, buts its worth a watch if you like movies based on school

This is a brilliant film for depicting the clash between authority and youth in the 1960s counter-culture. Malcolm Macdowell puts in an excellent performance as the leader of a gang of 'crusaders' who are out to take on the oppressive authoritative regime at their public school, with overreaching authority placed in the hands of the whips.There are some extremely powerful scenes such as the beating given to the three school boys by their elders for their bad attitude, the classic cafe scene and the acrobatic scene when an elder boy (Richard Warwick) goes through a gymnastic routine on a bar watched and admired by a younger boy (Rupert Webster). Richard Swann also stands out for his performance as the cynical and emotionally restrained head whip - Rowntree, as does Arthur Lowe as the downtrodden housemaster, Mr Kemp.The film slowly tracks the growing resentment of the crusaders to their treatment and ends in a stunning climax.

If.... is a strange film since it seems to be on the border between the mainstream and the art film. It is definitely experimental in terms of its use of color as well as not being necessarily clear about whether certain moments of the film are fantasy for the characters (though some moments simply MUST be).For those familiar with a Clockwork Orange, it is made clear by this film why Kubrick made the casting decision of Malcolm McDowell for the famous anti-hero Alexander DeLarge. Malcolm McDowell is the driving force behind the film If.... even though he does not appear in every scene. He is wonderful with his disregard for the rules made to oppress himself and his classmates, and he pulls off this rebellious attitude with a convincing smart mouth and a bit of repressed evil.The theme of rebellion is practically shouted within this movie. When McDowell's character enters the story, he wears a cloth around his face and his classmates jokingly refer to him as Guy Faux, who you might remember as V's main inspiration in V for Vendetta. He and his closest friends are also constantly being punished throughout the film for acting against such seemingly unnecessary rules. But this is the environment they are brought up in - it is a private school for the upper-class in which they live and the adults will shape them to become upper-class adults through the means of rough discipline which at some points can arguably be described as abuse.The room in which Mick Travis (McDowell) and his closest friends hang out is also filled with photos focusing on rebellion. These photos come from various revolutions or wars, so most of the photos depict heroes (if you want to call them that) fighting in military battles.A sub-theme of this film seems to be repressed homosexuality. Rumors of a certain boy amongst the group claim he is homosexual, and this boy is given a scene where he focuses his attention on an upper- class-man exercising his gymnastic abilities. There is very little room for reading this scene as anything other than longing for the older boy, and it is a true example of the male gaze in cinema. Also, this is revisited later when the two boys are in the same bed together, smiling at each other with their shirts off.What is strange about this film is that there are moments of black and white footage, and these scenes do not seem to have a pattern. A lot of them are moments that are clearly within the diegesis of the film while others represent fantasy sequences - these fantasy sequences seem to be when the focus is on Mick Travis. But as said before, there is no true pattern as normal events and strange ones alike take the aesthetic of being shot in black and white, so it is peculiar why the director shot any sequence in color at all.Finally, if you are very sensitive or get offended easily this is not the film for you - the ending which the film builds up to is extremely disturbing.3.0/4.0

Feature films set in English public schools are strangely timeless: their look, their feel, their atmosphere (and if they were in Odo-rama, probably their smell) are all very similar and, of course not forgetting the hazing, caning, abuse, humiliation, hierarchy, class structure and repression of all sexual orientations - all aimed at transmitting social strictures and structures to the next generation. Lindsay Anderson's "If... " doesn't depart from that template but the difference is that all those strictures are the film's main subject rather than its background to another story (as in, for instance "Another Country"). Malcolm McDowell's character resistance is existential rather than political and there was something marvellously 1960s about the movie, with its trippy escape into town ("out of bounds!"), street theatre and a joyride on a stolen motorbike, the hook up with the cafeteria girl and the dreams of free love. The ending is a little disappointing due to the cop-out into violence - the Sixties' hedonist culture did at the time reverberate through even the stodgiest of social institutions, for a while at least. The film switches back and forth between colour and black & white film stock, which gives it an alienating and interesting feel. (Prosaically, this was due to budget restrictions forcing some scenes to be filmed in black and white for technical reasons). Marvellous sound track with Sanctus from Missa Luba.