The classic film Richard Linklater calls “the ultimate teen rebellion movie”
The films of Richard Linklater comprise many genres, from the coming-of-age drama of Dazed and Confused to the mind-bending science fiction of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly via the touching romance of Before Sunrise. Linklater’s oeuvre is simply doused in quality and thematic variety.
Given his impact across various realms of cinema, the director has caught the attention of fans with varying tastes. In a bid to offer a peek behind the curtain, Linklater once ran through a selection of his favourite films during a feature with Rotten Tomatoes. During that conversation, he claimed that a classic British film ought to be considered the “ultimate teenage movie”. It’s Lindsay Anderson’s If…, starring Malcolm McDowell, Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, David Wood and Robert Swann.
“The great British director Lindsay Anderson died 20 years ago, and he only made five or six films, but they’re all very interesting,” Linklater said, “And I think his most famous is called If… It’s the film Malcolm McDowell did before A Clockwork Orange, and it’s kind of the ultimate teenage movie.”
“It’s beautiful and very radical,” the director continued. “It won Cannes that year, and it’s very much of its time, the ’60s, and Malcolm McDowell is brilliant in it. It’s the ultimate teen rebellion movie — and I like that genre — but it’s also very poetic, almost Brechtian, and there are almost fantasy elements to it.”
If… serves as a satire of English public school life and focuses on a gang of young students who incite a rebellious uprising against the authorities and powers that be of their boys’ boarding school. The violence of the 1968 movie led to an X certification, given the public’s opinion on the matter at the time. Despite the controversy, or perhaps because of it, the film was awarded the Palme d’Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.
Continuing to express his admiration for Anderson’s film, Linklater said: “Like, there’s this woman in the movie who might not even be real. It’s filmed in colour, and there are sections that are black-and-white, and it’s kind of amazing. It’s the first film of a trilogy, too, one of the greater film trilogies, in my opinion.”
“It’s definitely worth watching,” the director concluded, “It used to be a bigger cult film in the ’70s and the ’80s, but I see it’s falling off. I don’t know if young people are watching it the way they used to.” Linklater then went as far as to say that If… should be considered an even better teenage movie than his own Dazed and Confused.
Check out the trailer for If… below.
