"I am giving a talk next weekend on Lindsay Anderson's Film "If". It is part of a series of talks on the meanings of the 60s. I will try and interpret it all in the light of the destruction of Marxism in the 50s. I will argue that following the victory of conservative pre-capitalist values the 60s was inevitably anarchistic or unfocussed in its rebellion. "If" seems to me to fit perfectly into this mode. The rebellion is universal and ultimately non-threatening. though I do like it as a film and the sweet sequence of the young boys sleeping together along with the massacre of the teachers make it a personal favourite."
There is scarcely a film more representative of what was wrong with *part* of the movements of the '60s than "IF".
To put it in context, the film is an (unacknowledged) remake of Jean Vigo's great 1930s anarchist film "Zero de Conduit" (that is, "nothing [or "F"] in conduct" on the report cards of the protagonists). In many cases it is lifted scene for scene and shot for shot, but the changes are telling.
Vigo was a hardcore class-struggle anarchist, born while his father was in prison for attempting to assassinate the president of France. He died of tuberculosis, the disease of poverty, after making only a handful of luminous films. In "Zero de Conduit", the student protagonists go to a lower-middle class boarding school. In "If", they are children of the bourgeoisie at an upper class British "public school". Already, the class differences between rulers and ruled are blurred and become of a matter of style and egotism.
"Zero de Conduit" has a warm humanity filtered through a semi-surrealist lens. The pompous headmaster of the school is played by a child wearing a fake beard. The popular teacher does handstands in the classroom. The assistant principal in charge of discipline steals fruit from the students' lunches. But the students themselves are typical middle-school kids, with the protagonists distinguished from their classmates only by their whimsical anarchism.
The most telling difference is in the ending. At the close of "Zero de Conduit," the student rebels bombard the dignitaries attending a graduation ceremony with old shoes and tomatoes, then escape across the rooftops. In "If," they open fire with machine guns stolen from the school armory, massacering their classmates as well as the dignitaries. "Zero de Conduit" is a rebellion against authority. "If" is a rebellion against society, bourgeois egotists wearing the mantle of stalinism.
In the cultural war between surrealism and Hollywood, surrealism comes out on top every time.