In his compelling study of if.... (1968), starring which stars Malcolm McDowell as an English public school student who leads a guerrilla insurgence, Mark Sinker traces director Lindsay Andersons depiction of the progress from repression, conformity and fusty ritual to anarchy and bloody revolt. The films title is a sardonic nod to Rudyard Kiplings most famous poem, while its narrative explores how prankish rebels are groomed to police an Empire. Released at a time of unprecedented student uprisings in Europe and America, if.... provided a peculiarly English perspective on the battle between generations the perennial war of the romantically passionate against the corrupt, the ugly, the old, and the foolish. Though its emotional surface is authentically anti-authoritarian, its intellectual substance, as Sinker argues, is rooted in a deep familiarity with the symbols of English ruling-class values.
In his foreword for this new edition, Mark Sinker considers if.... s continuing relevance in respect of two contemporary phenomena (the ghastly commonplace of school shootings; urban terrorism) including the degree to which we somehow continue to feel sympathy toward this small gang of entitled schoolboys. Contemplating director Andersons ambivalence towards education, not least the jargons of academic film theory after the 1960s, Sinker reflects on how his own approach to the film was informed by the critical lingua franca of the 1980s music press.
