shane013a-1 Upon leaving the theater after see If....for the first time I too was stunned, shocked..blown away. Never before had such an ending played across the big screen in front of me without the mandatory "fix"....society or good will out. Now it's old hat. Art house fans will love its drawn out scenes and its well place inanities. Youngsters will abhor all of the above. The beat goes on.

imanhassan-53889 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

Irishchatter OK I know this movie included Malcolm McDowell before he got involved with "A Clockwork Orange". I thought at the beginning, it just made me bored straight away because there's pretty much no action. Its just like a typical all-lads boarding school which involves a strict timetable and strict teachers. I felt they should've developed McDowell's character more because he didn't seem to be confident in being a bad boy. Although in the end, he brought a gun to the school but i could be wrong. Ysee, i only watched 30 minutes of this film so I didn't bother finding out the end until i looked at the photos on IMDb. I just think this film is boring and pretty much lazy, I wouldn't consider this as the best movie of the 1960's.

Christopher Culver Released in 1968, directed by Lindsay Anderson with a screenplay by David Sherwin, IF... is a story of three non-conformist schoolboys played by Malcolm McDowell, Richard Warwick, David Wood, who plot revenge. Organized as a series of tableaux separated by title cards, IF... spends its first half depiction the harsh rules that these boys live under at their elite public school, and the arbitrary punishments given out by senior boys, headed by the sinister Rowntree (Robert Swann) and the distant school officials. This is all in an environment of bizarre old rituals, Latin refrains, and hardly more intelligible English public school slang (and of course, it wouldn't be a classic story of British public school life without some innuendo about buggery.) Then, as the storytelling takes on an increasingly surreal tone where we question what is real and what is fantasy, the boys and a girl from town get their hands on weapons and go after those who have wrong them.The 1960s was a time of war in Vietnam (and other violent conflicts brought to viewers globally by the media) and youth uprisings in the United States and France. Plus, these elite British school also featured compulsory military drill. In IF..., the walls of these boys' dormitory is covered with magazine cutouts of war photographs, as if to say that in a violent world, it is no surprise if the young too made recourse to violence. In this respect it feels very much like a precursor to Aki Kaurismäki's THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL. IF... also reflects the new sexual freedom of 1960s Britain, and the frustration kindled in these young men who see such open sexual expression in magazines and town streets but cannot have any of it. There are a number of films from this era that document the rise of a counterculture and more open attitudes, but few are as sympathetic to these young people as this film of Anderson and Sherwin.The only serious flaw of IF... is that the main actors are too old to convincingly play teenagers, being in their mid 20s at the time of shooting. Imagine how much more shocking the film would be if it were real sixth-formers acting, though I suppose the (few) sex scenes made this impossible. Also, I must express my discontent with the quality of the audio, which is very muddy. Still, IF... is deservedly a classic, and it is available in a Criterion edition packed with enjoyable and informative extras, so I can give this a very strong recommendation.