391 If....

[Pete Hoskin]

I've hovered around this forum for years now, and have gleaned a great deal from its knowledgeable and enthusiastic members (so, thank you for that), but this is my very first post. I look forward to involving myself in a more active – and less parasitic – manner from now on!

Just in response to timec above, he quotes me as mentioning an e-mail from a Michael in the DVD Beaver review of If..... As an occasional reviewer for DVD Beaver, I wrote both the film review for If.... and the comments on the Region 2 Paramount disc, but I neither received nor decided to feature the e-mail from Michael (I suspect that Gary may have done that).

I mention this as, personally, I don't place much credence in Michael's suggestion that the version of If.... included on both the Criterion and Paramount DVDs is the “censored versionâ€

[Awesome Welles]

On the issues of full frontal nudity I have read the following on IMDB. Unfortunately with no citations one never knows whether anything on IMDB is true....

In order for the full-frontal nude scene of Mrs Kemp to be passed in the UK chief censor John Trevelyan asked Lindsay Anderson to remove shots of male genitals in the shower scene. Anderson agreed to this and the film was released uncut with an X certificate.

[tryavna]

On the issues of full frontal nudity I have read the following on IMDB. Unfortunately with no citations one never knows whether anything on IMDB is true....

In order for the full-frontal nude scene of Mrs Kemp to be passed in the UK chief censor John Trevelyan asked Lindsay Anderson to remove shots of male genitals in the shower scene. Anderson agreed to this and the film was released uncut with an X certificate.

Hmmm.... I could have sworn that was already mentioned by someone....

[Blackmail Is My Life]

I am surprised Criterion let such a glaring error slip through in Ehrenstein's essay in the booklet. He refers to the "Columbine massacre of 1991."

That was a rough one, but the entire essay really labored to explain why this film was so crucial. Just finished watching it and I think that This Sporting Life accomplishes much of the same work w/o belaboring the point.

[Paul Sutton]

If memory serves, didn't Malcolm McDowell record a commentary track for if.... several years ago?

Malcolm did record a commentary for a British company called 'lipsynch' who had been licensed to release the DVD in the UK, but lipsynch misspent their production money and claimed they needed additional funds because the negative was 'too damaged' — unaware until I told them that the BBFC had recently restored it (albeit in a censored form)

According to the commentary, or some other supplement on the disc (or else I've imagined it all), full frontal shots were cut by Anderson himself during the normal editing process, in consultation with McDowell, who felt uncomfortable about their inclusion. So there were shots, and there were cuts, but they had nothing to do with censorship (other than self-censorship). Were there other non-Malc shots that were cut for different reasons, or has an urban legend grown up around this material?

No, the full-frontal male nudity was restored by Lindsay for the film's release in the UK in 1971, when it was re-classified with an 'AA' certificate. Most of the 'AA' prints in the UK are uncensored, such as the ones I saw at the Leicester Phoenix Arts in 2000 and at Queen's College, Cambridge 2002 (and they weren't the same print). The most complete version of the film - which included more nudity in the cafe scene - was the print screened by the BBC on more than one occasion in the late 70s.

[Antoine Doinel]

The year of rebellion: If... not when

[swo17]

Obligatory post to denote that this film is being upgraded to Blu-ray because I am bored

[SamLowry]

...but will the blu-ray restore edited scenes? I imagine extras will be the same.

[aox]

I want to see the film the way Criterion intended me to see it though.

[movielocke]

Somehow, it has never once occurred to me that "old boy" was anything other than an old British colloquialism, but at somepoint in the film I was suddenly thunderstruck that "old boy" is part of the class structure and rather than just being background patter it was supposed to be communicating to me information about the relationship of the two people (the one saying "old boy" and the one to whom the term is directed) as well as convey information about their high social status (they come from families well off enough to send their kids to boarding schools.) i've never noted in a thousand movies that the term meant anything, but it all of sudden hit me while watching this film.

That said, if the educational policies seen in Kes for poor kids are repulsive (a system that funnels every male who reaches maturity into the pit), at least we know that the rich are forcing their children through an even more vile education system one of systematic abuse and toxic social ideologies.

And I'm not talking about the social ideologies of the kids that sensibly end the film with their rebellion. But the prefects and headmaster and parents and other children that buy into and perpetuate these cycles of abuse. In some ways it reminds me of greek culture with their abusive cycles of hazing rituals (and post graduate access to power and privilege), but far, far more extreme, and inflicted upon children at a far more vulnerable stage of life.