Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 118: Sun Apr 29

if.... (Anderson, 1968): Curzon Soho, 3pm

This is the 11th screening in the excellent Enthusiasm strand at Curzon Soho and will be shown from a 35m print.

Curzon Soho introduction:
To celebrate the 50 years since Lindsay Anderson's if...., this 35mm screening will feature an introduction and Q&A from actor and playwright David Wood, who stars in the film as Johnny. David will speak of the making of the movie and work with maverick director Lindsay Anderson and actor Malcolm McDowell and afterwards will sign copies of his new book Filming if....

Chicage Reader review:
Lindsay Anderson indulges his taste for social allegory with a tale of a repressive boys' school rocked by student revolutionaries who listen to African music. Though clearly about Mother England and her colonies, the film found its popular success, in that distant summer of 1969, in being taken quite literally. Anderson deserves credit for sniffing out the cryptofascist side of the student movement, and his presentation of oppression—sexual and social—is very forceful. Yet the film finally succumbs to its own abstraction with an ending that satisfies neither symbolism nor wish fulfillment.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.