If ….
Last week our socialist film club in Swindon showed Lindsay Anderson’s amazing 1968 film, “if ….”.
British cinema in the 1960s was reflecting a society in painful transition between its defunct role of Imperial Metropole, and its future at that stage still unmapped. Among works of genius like “Peeping Tom” and Performance”, “If …” still stands out. Set in a top public school (filmed at Cheltenham College, who the film-makers had sent a false script to, tricking them into cooperation), it shows a rancid and corrupt world where conformity is enforced by unaccountable violence, with no due process of justice, but wrapped in sanctimonious self righteousness.
Remember that only in the 1950s boys at British public schools could expect a career in the Empire, in perhaps Kenya or Malaysia. Like quite a few men my age, I am the victim of a Direct Grant school education, a failed piece of social experimentation where private schools took between one quarter and one half of their pupils from the state system, and the rest from fee-paying parents. The social mix and atmosphere of a Direct Grant was accurately captured in Jonathan Coe’s novel “The Rotters Club”. Indeed Coe’s book even has a character in my own position, the son of left wing radicals washed up there by anachronism.
How bizarre it was that these schools had substantial armories, with Bren guns and rifles, and Wednesday afternoon square bashing in our little army uniforms. Boys being brought up to rule an Empire that no longer existed.
My school, King Edwards (KES) in Bath, as late as the 1970s still creaked under the weight of Empire. The most repellant part of the ethos was the expectation of entitlement and privilege – yet the whole lie was undermined because those from the state sector were always second class, and the pretence of a meritocracy based on education was shown false. The most important thing was the prestige and reputation of the school, and bullies would always be supported over the victims, who were regarded as weak and anti-School.
Central to the experience was the unmitigated abuse of power in defence of the school against any one who showed any independence of mind and spirit. The most loathed and hated despot when I was at school was a petty sadist called Langdon Jones (derided as “Pres”), who later became headmaster. In the spirit on 1970s rebellion, some sixth formers once burnt the message “KILL PRES” in ten foot letters using weed killer on the rugby pitch the night before an important game.
Amazingly, the school today is actually proud of the bullying terror by this depraved martinet. I quote from the school’s website:
A former pupil remembers a Fourth Form English lesson where a couple of boys were messing around. Lang, curiously, let it pass, but later in the lesson he wandered up behind them, wrestled with them and painted their noses with Tippex, quite literally marking their cards. The point was effectively made.
Another pupil remembers a Third Form lesson. Lang had set some work and all heads were down in silence; Lang clearly got bored, picked up a ruler and walked down an aisle flicking every boy’s ear.
One hated teacher, another sadist who was a South African and a supporter of Apartheid, and who used to eulogise about the patriotism of 1930s Germany (as he euphemistically put it) once had his motorbike hauled up onto the roof. And the school often had a feral and dangerous atmosphere. (In 1974, I stood as “Communist (Marxist Leninist)” candidate in the School mock elections and got 37 votes, the highlight of my “campaign” was physically smashing up an election meeting of the young NF candidate)
The film “If …” is set in a more prestigious school that KES, but the institutionalised bullying, the intolerance of even the mildest non-conformity, and the absence of any counterweight to protect the victims are the same. The school in “If …” is even worse than my own experience, because it is a boarding school, with no escape.
The completely accurate portrayal of the insanity of life in the institution gives the film a surreal feel, so that even when genuinely hallucinatory elements are introduced, they do not seem surprising. Malcolm McDowell’s performance is sublime, having exactly the right measure of understated independence, calibrated to drive the authorities into fury. The sequences with the unnamed girl, played by Christine Noonan, are perfectly escapist and erotic.
And the end of the film? What can I say? In the context of all that has led up to it, the end is exhilarating, and seems morally justified – in fiction if not in real life. Metaphorically, the old system deserved to be killed. As one of the Panthers once said, “Let us now criticise injustice with the assault rifle”. This film really brings out in me how much I hate the rich to the marrow of my bones.
Andy,
I have seen ‘If’ on seceral occasions but being state sector educated your own experiences do not surprise. Moving to Harlow New Town in the 1955 I had the ‘privilege’ of going to one of the new streamed comprehensives, meaning that if your faile at 11+ you could by ‘diligence and late development’ move into the Grammar Stream, not that it actually happened to anyone in my experience.
Bullying by the staff was par for the course the French teacher who would walked into a class and immediately hit two or three of around the head with a rolled up magazine ‘just in case’ was accepted practice. The religious knowledge teacher who would attack you with a cane because when he cycled past you earlier in the day you did not doff your cap or tug your forelock in deference. The worst was the PE teacher who would make the fat kid or the weaker one run round the gym in their underpants whilst he chased and beat them with a slipper in front of the rest of the group.
In our last year our revenge was not on the scale of ‘If’ but the staff v pupils rugby match, where by now many of us were to big to be bullied but had long memerories was interesting to say the least. The RE and PE teachers, our tormentors for so long, did not know what hit them, although the staff won by a clear 30 points those two teachers substituted themselves midway through the second half we had used every scrum, ruck and line out to kick f**k out of them. I have never really been a vengeful person and as 12/13 year old had been the subject of a lot of bullying, but that final rugby
match is a very sweet memory.
I suppose the good fortune of the state school was mixed gender and many a bullied boy found solace in the soothing hands of one his female classmates.
Pete
Comment by Pete Brown — 31 January, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
Apparently, Lindsey Anderson hadn’t decided how the film would end. He picked up a copy of the Guardian and saw students on the roof of the Sourbonne with machine guns - it was May 1968, and had the end of the film.
Comment by Adamski — 31 January, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
As a Lindsay Anderson aficionado in the sixties I was inspired by If… a lot but in time I got more from Oh Lucky Man and This Sporting Life and treated If.. as an indulgence when I last saw it sometime in the ’90s.
It seemed somewhat Italian style in its pitch and mood I recall — but then I’ve not been able to find many who are familiar with the film as it seems to have lost traction.So my opinions were constrained by their isolation,
Nonetheless the BFI lists If… as its # 12 among its top 100 — so I guess my initial reaction was justified in some measure anyway.
Nonetheless –while it began life on stage — my presently preferred grammar school protest movie is Another Country. I think it superb –but again its a neglected film and little noted–and appears to be a secret restrained by my memory.
Bought up as a catholic school boy in Australia the whole boarding house/grammar thing was different.But there’s a local film that charts that experience with gutso and a morbid sentimentality esp for the catholic brothers — The Devil’s Playground by Fred Schepisi . In fact you could do a whole international film festival on such a back-to-school theme which woudlo be very different from your standard Hollywood high school movie..
The irony of my Anderson fascination — was that I took some time to catch up to the cinematic context within which he was working and in time my favorite ’sixties’ directors are Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz — partners of course in many projects –and key players in the British New Wave.
This cinema reflected a great and powerful theatre movement that was being driven by Harold Pinter, John Osborne, John Arden, Edward Bond, Shelagh Delaney and the sponsorship of people like Anderson and Joan Littlewood et al.In fact many film directors and film writes learnt their craft on the stage — esp the Royal Court and the Theatre Workshop. It was indeed quite remarkable and very class aligned and incisive. such that today I think we suffer from its ebb so much and tend to look elsewhere for political and critical benchmarks.
So when I watch Albert Finney I can still relate to the past. I can do the same with the late Richard Harris — even as Dumbledore! — and others…but Malcolm McDowell seems so much outside that, being a creature who didn’t get any better than his youthful promise — first seen in If….
And look at Vanessa Redgrave — still punching despite the WRP alliance that skewed her politics for a while.
As for the concurrent ’60s French New Wave — I wonder so much about that. So very fashionable at the time and influential, but, for instance, who relates to the work of Jean-Luc Godard today either for politics or for political inspiration?
So let’s bring back If.. and bring back Anderson. Let’s get inspired all over again with promise and passion driven by metaphors.
And lets get excited, once again, about shooting headmasters through the head…
Comment by Dave Riley — 31 January, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
Talking of good films … Eisenstein’s revolutionary classic Battleship Potemkin’s a free DVD with the Guardian on Saturday …
Comment by Prinkipo Exile — 31 January, 2008 @ 2:10 pm
…and this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%A9ro_de_conduite
Comment by MichaelRosen — 31 January, 2008 @ 5:36 pm
Meta-Js,
I got a DVD vesrion of the film out this afternoon and watched with my students - none of us could see any direct relevance to the machinations of the ‘evil’ Martin Smith and the SWP central committee.
Maybe not the best choice of article for this site.
Comment by inf4mation — 31 January, 2008 @ 6:50 pm
O! I don’t like the film. I find it tedious and too arty. It’s one of those films when you are at school and people say have you seen “If?” And if you are arty/angry/lefty you are meant to say “yeah, its about the violence inherit in the system, blah blah blah” NOw I realise I sound like a total philistine, but it is almost a relief when they all start shooting one another. Maybe I should just stick to musicals - I understand what is happening there ;-/
Comment by Cat — 31 January, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
inf4mation #6
“none of us could see any direct relevance to the machinations of the ‘evil’ Martin Smith and the SWP central committee.”
from Andy’s article (nearly):
“The most important thing was the prestige and reputation of the party, and bullies would always be supported over the victims, who were regarded as weak and anti-SWP.”
it works for me
Comment by Dear Koba — 31 January, 2008 @ 7:31 pm
“The sequences with the unnamed girl, played by Christine Noonan, are perfectly escapist and erotic”.
That scene was improvished between the two actors and wasn’t scripted properly by Lindsay Anderson or the writers. And I do think the b/w and colour scenes do kinda compliment each other though it was done not out of artistic merit but cost.
Pete: “Nonetheless –while it began life on stage — my presently preferred grammar school protest movie is Another Country. I think it superb –but again its a neglected film and little noted–and appears to be a secret restrained by my memory”.
I agree with that. I never saw the play on stage (but read the play) but saw the film. I think think both Rupert Everett and Colin Firth are superb in it.
Comment by Louise — 31 January, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
I’m with Cat on this, I never liked it, and never thought that it lived up to it’s important status placed on it.
Perhaps if I had been around at the time and was 16 at an English public school instead of being 6 years old at a state RC primary school in Ayrshire it might have meant something to me, yet I do get plenty from other films of the era.
Kes was released just a few months later and I can relate to that Ok.
It doesnt seem very real to me. I dont imagine that kids in that background did react in this way. His other films I can relate to more and seem to be in place for what they are saying.
It seems to be me to be a movie for the people from that background who perhaps store up resentment against that school system. So, that systenmm being alien to me means that it’s not something that I can get excited about (maybe).
Or like so many american college movies where the outsider rebel stands up to bullying prefects and teachers or school authorities. Its kind of like “footloose” with pretentious photgraphy.
I remember getting all ‘revoltuionary’ and fired upjumping around the youth club to ‘teenage rampage’ by Sweet in 1973 which I find more poltically inspiring then ‘if’, or ast least did when I was the ‘angry young man’ that the film is supposedly aimed at.
Also, I once read an interview with Anderson where he said that it wasnt really an allegory, it was more basedon his own school experience and fantasy of personal revenge.
I disagree with Dave re the New Wave, as I can watch those films, which are a bit older than “if”, and feel part of what the writer and director are doing. Truffauts ‘les quatres cents coup’ does much of what ‘if’ purports to do, ten years earlier and better, in my opinion.
Comment by Jim Monaghan — 31 January, 2008 @ 8:01 pm
I’m in the “Another Country” camp. Me, I like me films realist. Best part is Firth admitting that despite his marxism he can’t get over his love for cricket…
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 31 January, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
A wonderful film. A group of us saw it in Vancouver circa 1969 and the ending evoked cheers, and not just from us alone.
Comment by Larry gambone — 31 January, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
Okay, I’m being a bit rude but are there any genuine real working class revolutionaries about nowadays or are they all public school rejects?
Comment by John Gray — 31 January, 2008 @ 8:44 pm
I think you had to be there.
It doesn’t strike me as arty, or metaphorical, it is an almost documentary realist portrayal of life in a british public school of that era.
The surreality is not the confection of the film-maker but the inherent absurdity of the subject.
And the portrayal is inch-perfect. The studied foppishness and fashionability of the otherwise utterly conformist prefects, the fact that the prefects actually run the school with the ineffectual collusion of the Arthur Lowe House master, the grandiose self-justfying philosphising of the Headmaster. The pervasive air of homo-erotocism. All this is absolutley spot on, and 100% true.
One of the most tellingly accurate bits of the film is the fact the rebels are vindictively and brutally flogged for just “having the worng attidude”. but when they use live ammunition to shoot at staff members in a CCF practice they get just told off. That is completelly convincing to me.
And I still feel like going onto the roof with a machine gun every time I think of the place. Do I forgive my parents for sending me there? I never have nor never shall.
Comment by Andy Newman — 31 January, 2008 @ 8:48 pm
John #13
And your point is?
Weren’t Direct grant schools the policy of the 1945 Labour government? To send working class boys (mainly) to get the alleged benefit of a private education, and increase social mobility? It was thought of at the time as progressive social engineering.
It didn’t fucking work, i can tell you that. A naive and stupid policy, and we suffered for it. But I don’t need some working class hero moralism criticisng me for being there, after I already had the appalling expereince of being the working class outsider in a cess spit of privilige.
Incidently, at the last election for general secretary of the FBU, both candidates had been to a Direct grant school I believe.
But for all that, it was still better than my mum and dad both having to leave school at 14.
Comment by Andy Newman — 31 January, 2008 @ 8:56 pm
John: I went to a comprehensive, do I get Order of Lenin for that dramatic feat. Actually, I fecking loathed the place and glad when I left. But hey, it was a good wholesome workin’ class school….Again, do I get points on my card for being a teenage class fighter, like you get from Tesco?
I know some good lefties who have been to different kinds of schools, hell I even know some ex-public schoolers. Does it really matter where Andy went to school? Isn’t it about the politics of the individual as opposed to where they went to school all those years ago..?
Comment by Louise — 31 January, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
I went to state schools for all of my education and it was shite, I left at 15.
I always fancied the idea of public school, probably fed by yarns of midnight feasts and just the idea of living away from home.
I remember my brilliant son Nathan in a live debate on radio with Joan Burnie, a Scottish journalist, about hip-hop, movies, video games etc influence on young people. He pointed out that the popularity of Harry Potter didnt lead to a rise in dabbling in black magic. Burnie, pointed out that it did lead to rise in young people wanting to go go to public schools. Stories aimed at younger people do play on the fact that kids like the idea of residential schools, especially if the story shows that they have feedom and fun.
I think I would have got on better at a school like that (public school not hogwarts
) and did harbour a desire to attend such a place.
I also remember having a priest coming to school trying to recruit young men to the priesthood. My mate George and I did consider this, not because we were religious, but we reckoned that we would be kings in such a school, the best footballers in a world of geeks and bookish types!
I hate the prejudice of the left that says you cannot be a revolutionary unless you are certified working class. All evidence points to the contrary.
But we DO have a problem in the left, much like the skills shortage in traditional trades. There has been very little recruitment from genuine working class backgrounds in recent years and that is noticeable. When I was younger in London I remember meetings that drew people from all walks of life, this happens less now, especially in the youth movements. It’s probably because younger people have less paths to politics from the workplace due to the demise of traditional induistries and trades unions. It means that it is now heavily weighted towards students and intellectuals.
A couple of young men came to our party recently as shop stewards in their early twenties. They find working with youth on the left uncomfortable and are more at home among older people in the trade union movement.
As we know, educational success and attendance at university is limited to people from poorer backgrounds and this limits the ‘gene pool’ of socialists.
Comment by Jim Monaghan — 31 January, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
We do need more socialists from working class communities- we need more bloody militants in all areas- and indeed the revolutionary left would be strengthened by being able to appeal far more to certain sections of the working class.
But there’s no space for prolier than thou attitudes either. It’s the politics people practice now and what they do that matters not whether they went to Eton, Harrow, the local comp or any where else.
Comment by Jason — 31 January, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
Interesting points Jim
It is worth noting that Hogwarts bears little resemblence to any real public school, but is derived from the image of public schools made conventional in books like Frank Richards’ Bunter series or Enid Blyton books that were aimed at working class children, as the boarding school was a device of getting rid of the all pervasive inflencse of adults that made any adventures implausible.
So the escapism of fictional boarding schools is lng established, and very different - i should imagine, i was spared that awfulness - from the real thing.
There is also a question in your mention of socialists from traditioanl industies, that for example, my grandad who was in the CP, and a convenor in a steel works, went into a manual job due to lack of other options. Had he lived fifty years or sixty years later he would have got a job in an office or gone to university.
Comment by Andy Newman — 31 January, 2008 @ 9:41 pm
Joanne Rowling’s said that she gets lots of post from people thanking her for raising the profile of (a) boarding schools and (b) magic[k], and that she doesn’t actually give a damn about either of them - it’s just a frame for the story. (In the case of magic I think the story’s the weaker for it, but that’s by the way.) It explains why the Hogwarts ‘furniture’ is so thinly imagined; it’s all a bit lashings-of-pop.
If… is a great film, but I think part of what makes it one is Lindsay Anderson’s defiant, bloody-minded refusal to tell the story straight, which partly disqualifies it as a political film. (See also the mostly but not entirely awful Britannia Hospital - not one for the socialist film club - and the truly wonderful O lucky man!, in which Anderson turns into a kind of cross between John Grierson and David Lynch.)
My school days (partly spent at a fee-paying single-sex school) were nothing like that, fortunately, except in the general combination (which it brings out superbly) of arbitrary authority, constant public scrutiny and moments of weirdly intense experience. And I do remember that feeling that you get sometimes in the sixth form, evoked in Pete’s comment as well as the film itself, of Hang on, we could take this place…
Comment by Phil — 31 January, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
Britania Hospital is possible the worst film ever made. Or at least the worst film not made by Mel Brooks.
Comment by Andy Newman — 31 January, 2008 @ 10:18 pm
I could always relate to “If”.
Your school sounds quite like mine (which was a state grammar)
Cadet force, armoury, even mock battles on the school field…
We even had a similar teacher to your “Lang”, who once used coloured chalk to paint someone’s face as a clown!
When I proposed the motion for a school Council at a meeting of over 300 pupils, he sauntered up to the stage and set up a tape recorder.
It was passed, but didn’t turn into a Soviet and was later incorporated by packing it with nerds.
We certainly discussed a few “If” like fantasies on Sunny days on the school field, but in reality, there were some very good politicos there.
My mate was in the LPYS, which was controlled by I.S., we had some CND’ers and CP’ers and some very good teachers, who were often Labour Party supporters.
Comment by Prianikoff — 31 January, 2008 @ 10:32 pm
Only after learning from Slavoj Zizek that a couple smoking at the start of a scene signifies a post-coitial moment, did I realise what Bobby Philips and Wallace were getting up to in the tool shed…
Comment by Charlie Marks — 31 January, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
Education..what’s education?
Comment by Donkey — 31 January, 2008 @ 10:43 pm
I borrowed Britannia Hospital on DVD last year out of curiosity; I wanted to see if it was as awful as I remembered. Not quite, is what I remember thinking, but I can’t remember what the good bits were. (Robin Askwith’s shop steward was just as bad as I remembered.)
Comment by Phil — 31 January, 2008 @ 10:50 pm
some very good teachers, who were often Labour Party supporters
My History teacher - who was a LP member and a socialist, and said so - inadvertently converted me to Communism when I was 14. By the time Mao died I was a rather poorly-informed and idealistic Maoist (”Stop the Cultural Revolution? They can’t!“). I’m still grateful to have had a bit of a political education at school, even if earlier and later influences were ultimately more important.
Comment by Phil — 31 January, 2008 @ 10:56 pm
15. et al
Hi Andy
Since you have asked and it is a fair point, I despise all who have come from a privileged background and who also believe they can lecture those who have not had the same advantages in life, about what is good or bad or the way and how to forward “working class politics”
Comment by John Gray — 31 January, 2008 @ 11:02 pm
“There is also a question in your mention of socialists from traditioanl industies, that for example, my grandad who was in the CP, and a convenor in a steel works, went into a manual job due to lack of other options. Had he lived fifty years or sixty years later he would have got a job in an office or gone to university.”
Aye probably. I am not lamenting those days or saying we need young people in industry. My point is that there was a quick path to meeting, through politics, people of all walks of life. Maybe its not the whole reason but I believe that it is part of it. I dont see the same mix happening at the moment. In my late teens there were a lot of people my age in left wing parties who worked and lived in working class areas. I dont see that now other than possibly the civil service.
The other thing about traditional industries was that they oftem meant that people who worked together also lived in the same areas or even the same streets. There was a lot of activism that sprung up in communities leading to involvement in political activity. It also meant that work issues, political issues and local issues were shared by all or most, leading to more awareness, in my opinion.
I agree on your points on fictional images of boarding school, I thought I had expressed that, my post was about my perspective of them then, at 14 or 15 and what made them attractive to me and other kids, (and still does judging by harry potter) not the reality of what they are. Even Tracey Beaker living in care homes shows that kids are sold on that idea of living in dorms with other children.
Maybe I am wrong on young people coming into socialist parties, It is certainly different where I live and I think the demise of the coal industry and textile industry has a lot to do with that. Perhaps London doesnt have these same problems.
As I said, the civil service still has young people active in trade unions who get involved in left politics, civil service jobs are seldom far from cities though. And two who joined Solidarity in our local area recently came from being young shop stewards in the open-cast coal industry.
Comment by Jim Monaghan — 31 January, 2008 @ 11:21 pm
Films about schools can act as a useful metaphor, or act as a microcosm, of how a society functions.
‘If…’ is very much of its time and stands as a historical document. I would add these other films that use school as a backdrop for examining society:
Zero de Conduit (thanks for reminding me, Michael)
Election
Kes
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Heathers
Also I recently watched an Independent film called ‘Half Nelson’ which I enjoyed. The teacher (Dan) is a crack-smoking, Bush-hating, radical. He teaches the inner city Brooklyn (mostly black) kids about dialectics, civil rights and social control. He quotes everyone from Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Mario Savio. He even has a copy of ‘The Communist Manifesto’ in his apartment.
“The only constant is change.” As Dan says.
Comment by Sean — 1 February, 2008 @ 12:07 am
Being catholic in Australia for most of the 20th century was akin to being working class and usually Irish.There was a strong identity which was enriched by the post war migrations from Italy especially.
That dynamic managed to split the Labor Party in ‘53 over the question of alliances with Communism and the ‘groupers’ — catholic shock troops — white anted the trade union movement with much success.
So the Catholic School system –while sold as a precept from the pope — was also aligned to aspirations of social mobility as every catholic child — boy or girl –was supposed to go to segregated ‘private’ Catholic schools.
Now — of course — after commitments of state aid from ALP govts –in the seventies — the Catholic Church is cutting edge privatisation of both secondary schooling and universities. And there’s so much less religion involved — less the Romanist ideology.
And school enrollments here are sold something like real estate.(The Protestant schools are sold with similar verve but they are such a small share of the present market place — except the new fundamentalist churches who have gone into schooling in a big way.)
So the milieu of If.. is foreign but nonetheless school is school regardless if anyone wears a gown. A year after I saw If.. I was walking home from a political event and was 100 metres from my parents front gate when I was picked up by cops because some local Maoists had fired the high school at the end of our street.
(I didn’t go there despite the proximity as I was a mic.) This wasn’t ‘normal school arson — a hobby here in urban Australia — but supposedly a political act. But it does suggests that the 1968 message was very much anti- what passed as education and if you check the context and method, the generation of 1968 was very keen and very successful at educating itself. There was indeed much traction in the counter culture — bookshops, creative endeavours, political orgs, etc –which treated establishment schooling with disdain.
We had here and fostered a large high school movement from about 1970 and that tradition today continues with some significant high school walkouts — orchestrated by the youth group Resistance. The last being in 2007 in Tasmania around the paper pulp mill.
A.S Neill was in vogue back then and dropping out was akin to merging with the masses (at least that was my rationale) rather than going bush to smoke dope and harvest magic mushrooms.
So If..’s major achievement is how brutal it is as a viewpoint. I think it infantile and indulgent — but it works –and represents a niche of what we like to watch as political and radical movie making. (Whats’ the options? Heathers? Pump up the Volume? Rebel without a cause?…)
But going back to Anderson — You can’t ignore the disaster that is Brittania Hospital — it is a mess and cheapens the whole trilogy that begins with If…. Nonetheless, I think This Sporting Life contains some of the best British acting caught on screen — esp Rachel Roberts performance — and Harris is superb and while it may be under the influence of the kitchen sink style it doesn’t fall into caricature one bit — despite its very northern setting.
But if you are after metaphors and the like — please take a moment some time to catch The Ruling Class with Peter O’Toole as a paranoid schizophrenic. The satirical play is better and sharper — but the film still sings. And its last scene has an impact in the way that If.. has. But this film is tragedy as well as a farce –whereas If.. is all about , I guess, strategy — ill formed and undeveloped — but then there was a lot of that in the sixties.
Anyway — my passion soon moved on from If… and I was caught up under the influence of Edward Bond and Peter Weiss (staring with the Marat/Sade) –and whatever I alluded to, despite my antipodean location, I owe so much to that creative wave that came out of Britain in the sixties. And it is so much neglected today…and the older I get the more I’ve learn’t to respect it (and, unfortunately, the more critical I become of Anderson given how unconditional I was originally)
I can discourse on two periods of creative magnificence with passion and some knowledge: Berlin 1918-1933 and Britain in the sixties/early seventies. I think If.. belongs among its most radical, indeed ‘revolutionary’, expressions.
Comment by Dave Riley — 1 February, 2008 @ 12:49 am
Andy said:
“I am the victim of a Direct Grant school education, a failed piece of social experimentation where private schools took between one quarter and one half of their pupils from the state system…”
I’m not sure that this is correct re the nature of direct grant schools. I went to a direct grant school, but as far as I am aware all the students were non-fee paying. Years after I left the school reverted to fee-paying, but up till then I think it was effectively a private school where the state paid for all the students.
Much of what is said above resonates with me, but I also remember that there were many ‘bright kids’ from working-class backgrounds, like me, who tried to subvert the grotesque upper-middle class ethos of the place. (To be fair, many ‘privileged’ kids also did the same.)
I certainly remember the cloying and unthinking Tory, CofE, militaristic, patriotic ethos - which finally drove me to leave after ‘O-levels’. Many of us did the same and went to tech colleges to continue in education. I also remember the vicious, bullying or simply eccentric teachers.
All-in-all a vile experience, but one that many of us (collectively)rejected at the time and walked away from as we grew in confidence.
All this was around the time that ‘If’ was first showing. I don’t remember at the time as seeing the film as liberating in any way, just fun. The real sense of liberation came from realising we could walk away from that crap and there was nothing the school could do about it. The Emperor had no clothes, and the Wizard of Oz was an ordinary man.
Comment by Lobby Ludd — 1 February, 2008 @ 1:44 am
John Gray…
If you live off a wage, or are dependent on someone who does, you are working class.
We must put to bed the old cultural definitions of class, which are not descriptive of the actual socio-economic circumstances people are in.
And Sean, I adore Half Nelson - okay, it’s mostly Ryan Gosling I adore… His character is asked by a girlfriend if he’s a communist, he prevaricates then later denies, but the fact he teaches the kids about dialectics gives it away…
Comment by Charlie Marks — 1 February, 2008 @ 3:16 am
Charlie and Sean,
Half Nelson is a brilliant film, but I’m not sure I agree with your reading of the film. I agree that Ryan Gosling’s character has radical leanings, but the more I think about it the more I think the contradiction is within himself.
He comes from a radical background - remember the scenes with his parents? - and he still argues his political corner but he’s seems burnt out and disillusioned by it all. It’s almost like he’s a modern day Jimmy Porter. “Where’s all the good causes gone? Fuck it, pass me the crack pipe.”
PS - The film was filmed and set in Sunset Park, Brooklyn and, if anything, the film makers sanitised it’s depiction of what is one of the poorest parts of New York. My wife’s a Special Needs teacher in a Middle School in Sunset Park and the stories she could tell . . .
Comment by Darren — 1 February, 2008 @ 5:44 am
I went to a school similar to Andy’s only even more privileged. It is still one of the most traumatic episodes in my life. Sending me there was my parents dream but I detested everything about it from the first day and hated every minute. Finally I managed to get myself expelled at the age of 16 and went to a local FE college instead, which felt like being let out of jail (not that I’ve been to jail but you get the idea).
I remember watching If for the first time when I was 15 and it was just brilliant. If I saw it now I would probably agree with Cat, but at the time…
Lots of people at my school hated it. Its kind of weird - public schools were/are generally hell holes. Even though they are for the privileged there is nothing privileged about the experience, except of course what it sets you up for in life. I have a theory about that, which may be a really stupid one but its the only sense I can make of it and it is this -
I think the humiliation, dehumanisation and discipline imposed on you as a young adolescent is designed to ingrain on you a deep determination never to let go of any power and privilege you may get in life ever again. It gives you a feeling of how unpleasant it is to be at the bottom of the pile so you will never ever put yourself in that position again, a bit like the aversion therapy they do with rats using electric shocks.
Public school life is set up like that - you start at the bottom, in my day ‘fagging’ was still in force, where you were a servant/slave of the 6th formers, but the big leap is when you get to be a 3 yearer. Then a whole world of privilege begins to open up, even more for 4 yearers, and so on.
Unfortunately (or not) I got myself out just before the 3 yearer mark. It broke my parents heart and I don’t think our relationship has ever fully healed since, but from my point of view its a price I am more than willing to pay.
Just the fact of boarding is enough. i looked at my old school website not so long ago and it is still cruising along. I was struck by two things, one the amazing amount of resources and opportunities for the children who go to these schools ( I didn’t really appreciate this at all then but they were there in my time too), and secondly the fact that they still board - in this day and age ! What parent would do that to their children !?
Andy is right to mention Empire - it was at the heart of the private school system and why they were boarding schools. In the days when it took six weeks for the ships to pass through Suez from India back to Britain the only schooling option for the servants of the far flung Empire was to send their children to board for most of the year. But now ?
I understand JohnG’s point about lecturing and that’s fair enough. But its also true that there are lots of people who have stared privilege in the face and rejected it who have also ended up in the revolutionary movement, for better or for worse for all concerned. The reality is that a privileged life is also one robbed of a certain humanity and not everyone is comfortable enough with that to accept the privileges as a fair trade off, especially when they are young and don’t really care about material things.
Is that so bad ? Of course, what the revolutionary movement does with such people is another question.
Comment by Mezhrayontsi — 1 February, 2008 @ 7:53 am
Well I think John Grey is wrong about the nature of privilige.
One thing I learnt at my school was that the so called “educational advantages” counted to nothing compared to the real inequalities which were based upon family wealth and social networks of the rich and established.
Those of us sent into that system from working class backgrounds were only tolerated. My massive privilige that John Grey resents qualified me to leave school and work as a hospital porter. Only some ten years later after dead end unskilled jobs did I force myself back into education and off to uni.
I wonder whether the John Grey’s of thirty years time will be using inverted snobbery to look down on people who went to the Academies that his beloved givernment have introduced - strip away the five hundred years of history and some illustrious old-boys, and KES in the 1970s was just an Academy - a private sector school with state funded pupils.
Comment by Andy Newman — 1 February, 2008 @ 8:44 am
BTW - yes Dave
“The ruling class” is a delicious film, especially Arthur Lowe as the communist butler.
Comment by Andy Newman — 1 February, 2008 @ 8:46 am
It gives you a feeling of how unpleasant it is to be at the bottom of the pile so you will never ever put yourself in that position again
I think it’s more straightforward than that. You take a young and vulnerable boy (I know next to nothing about girls’ schools) and encourage older boys to treat him brutally and arbitrarily for three years. Then you tell that boy he’s the boss now, and he can spend the next four years treating younger boys brutally and arbitrarily. Not only that, but the switchover from being brutalised to doing the brutalising comes when he’s going through puberty. That’s a massive social learning exercise: if you go through that you’re going to know what the world’s like and what it means to be an adult (to be a man, specifically).
Comment by Phil — 1 February, 2008 @ 8:59 am
There are other aspects of the traditional public school.
KES where i went had a special history here, becasue although when I went there is was a c-list day school, it had the anachronism that in the eighteenth century it had been one of the most fashionable schools in the country, hence old boys like Shelley, Byron and Oliver Goldsmith. Its decline marked the decline of Bath from being the centre of fashion in the Beau Nash/Jane Austen era, to being a backwards provincial town. This indeed gave the school an added air of seedy tragedy (as indeed did the city of bath in the 1960s and 1970s - if you go there now it is hard to recall what it was like when all the buildings were pitch black from coal - before restoration).
But in the nineteenth century KES was the boarding school of choice for the Indian Army, and many of the top British officiers during the mutiny had been there.
I think the education had two huge benefits to the Empire.
i) the boarding schools gave the boys a loyalty to class before familly
ii) an education based almost entirely in reading Latin (as it was in KES in the nineteenth century) was fantastic background. While reading Ceasar, and Tacitus and Suetonius they were ostensibly learnig a language, but the content they were reading was a manual on how to run an Empire.
Comment by Andy Newman — 1 February, 2008 @ 9:09 am
Dan is definitely a radical, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say he is a Jimmy Porter figure (good gag by the way, Darren – “Where’s all the good causes gone? Fuck it, pass me the crack pipe.”)
I think the politics of ‘Half Nelson’ are bit more ambivalent. In his public sphere - his job, his teaching - he is a dynamic and radicalising force to the youngsters in his class. In private, mainly with adults, it is a different matter: despair. Yet his drug habit is juxtaposed with his family cracking open bottle after bottle of wine and these scenes are saturated with feeling of drunken complacency. He seems awkward around adults and only comes alive in the classroom – apart from the time he coming down from a drug induced high.
I actually think it is something as silly as embarrassment as to why he doesn’t call himself a ‘communist’ to his girlfriend. This is 21st century America remember! I’ve never called myself a communist, but will proudly reveal to anyone who will listen that I’m a socialist. But then the term socialist is claimed by a wider spectrum of people. After Stalinism, I would find it hard to define myself as a communist – at the moment at least.
As for the central performance from Ryan Gosling…breathtaking. He is such a charismatic and attractive figure on screen.
However, it is a film that still fights for room in my mind a week after viewing, and that is always a good sign. And it is nice to see an American film broaching radical ideas without resorting to liberal pieties.
Comment by Sean — 1 February, 2008 @ 2:46 pm
Sorry if I’m intruding on something private, Andy, but did you have a particularly traumatic experience at your school? It’s just that sentiments like:
“And I still feel like going onto the roof with a machine gun every time I think of the place. Do I forgive my parents for sending me there? I never have nor never shall.”
seem so disproportionate to the experience as described that one wonders if there’s something more to it.
Comment by Carlo — 1 February, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
Sean,
cheers for the reply, and giving me an excuse to watch it again to chew over your comments.
Comment by Darren — 1 February, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
Kes is a beautiful film, still Ken Loache’s best films. I think the problem is school. School is rubbish, its designed to be rubbish and oppressive. Its to socialise you to be alienated. I went to seven different schools some were better than others. My last school St Augustines was the worst or it was because I was there as a teenager from 14 to 18. I felt smothered, like I was drowning, like no one understood me but then again that is how teenagers feel. I hated having to “fit in” I was academic but preferred the “bad girls” and got into lots of fights at school particularly with the boys, being a “good fighter” gave some good social standing but it was nasty. Teachers never really engaged with you and they all looked bored or totally frustrated, they either ignored you or shouted at you. I was always in trouble but out of school I was quite functional - involved in the church, a Venture Scout, had a part time job and quite hard working.
On boarding schools - its easier to write stories about children/young people in boarding school, as Andy has pointed out due to taking adults out of the story, you can also get up to things at night and at the weekend. When i was wee me and my friends used to play at boarding schools - all our Enid Blyton books and Bunty and Judy comics were all set either in orphanages or boarding schools.
Comment by Cat — 1 February, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
I went to a state comprehensive school and grew up on a council estate, I saw IF long after it was made as a young adolescent and really identified with it.
I think the general themes of anti-authoritarianism and rebellion are pretty universal + the hatred of the english establisment.
Comment by Adamski — 1 February, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
In fact, I have to say I identified more with If, than Kes. But that’s the way it goes . . .
Comment by Adamski — 1 February, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
In Half Nelson, Ryan Gosling’s parents are supposed to have partaken in anti-Vietnam war protests - but his father makes what can only be interpreted as a racist comment about his son teaching ebonics. I think we can assume he was not a red diaper baby.
I think the crack thing helps reverse what could have been a stereotypical situation of white teacher helping black pupil overcome drug problem. Rather, it’s white teacher on drugs, helped by black pupil and the drug-dealing friend of her imprisoned brother. The contradiction is, we all have something to impart, as well as to recieve.
Comment by Charlie Marks — 3 February, 2008 @ 2:52 am
Andy, it does seem as though you have a problem which you took to school (wherever it came from ) and did not grow out of it. wow - so much anger and immaturity even now. As they say, there are other alternative options for you ! I went there and I cannot recognise either the place or the people. Still Socialists always like revisionism, how else could they argue ?
Comment by nick — 5 December, 2008 @ 8:32 pm