Cinema
If….
Lindsay Anderson · 1968
Synopsis
The autumn start of term at an English boys' boarding school. The senior pupils in charge of discipline, the “whips”, have the younger boys wait on them and punish at will. Mick Travis and his two friends, Wallace and Johnny, drink vodka in their study, whose walls are covered with cut-out pictures. One day, Mick and Johnny slip off into town, steal a motorbike and walk into a truckers' café where a waitress works.
Context
The film was shot at Cheltenham, the college where its director had been a pupil; the headmaster had authorised the shoot on the strength of a sketchy script, very far removed from the film. The chapel scenes were shot in black and white for practical reasons that the sources explain in different ways, time or the cost of lighting; the director, who liked the effect, extended it to other passages. Shot in the spring of 1968, the film was released in London in December. At Cannes the following year, the British ambassador asked for its withdrawal as an insult to the nation; the director replied that the nation deserved the insult.
Who it is for
One hundred and eleven minutes, in English with subtitles. The film moves without transition from realistic scenes to dreamed scenes.
Prizes and reception
Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969, the name then given to the supreme award, the Palme d'Or having been suspended from 1964 to 1974.
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