Happy Birthday, Lindsay Anderson! Born today in 1923 as Lindsay Gordon Anderson, this British film critic, feature-film theatre and documentary director was also a leading-light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave.
Anderson is most widely remembered for his 1968 British black and white/Eastmancolor drama film 'if....', being a satire of public schools.
The film follows teenage rebel Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell in his cinematic debut), who returns to his upper-crust English public school. He is later caught between the sadistic older boys known as the Whips and the first-year students, known as Scum, who are forced to do their bidding.
The petty thefts and anti-social behavior of Travis and his two henchmen, Johnny (David Wood) and Wallace (Richard Warwick), soon attract the attention of both the Whips and the school's out-of-touch administration, and lead to an unexpected showdown.
Famous for its depiction of a savage insurrection at a fictitious boys' boarding school, the X certificate film was made at the time of the May 1968 protests in France by a director who was strongly associated with the 1960s counterculture.
The following year, 'if....' won the Palme d'Or at the 22nd Cannes Film Festival in May 1969. In 1999, the British Film Institute named it the 12th greatest British film of the 20th century;
'if....' is a daringly anarchic vision of British society, set in a boarding school in late-1960s England. This was before Stanley Kubrick made his mischief iconic in later casting him as Alex DeLarge in his 1971 British/American dystopian crime/sci-fi film 'A Clockwork Orange'.
Anderson has even acknowledged that his own film 'if....' was inspired by French film director Jean Vigo's forty-seven-minute 1933 French black and white comedy/short film 'Zéro de conduite' ('Zero for Conduct'). Whereas that film ended in a pillow fight, 'if....' culminated in bullets and bloodshed.
Mixing color and black and white as audaciously as it mixes fantasy and reality, 'if…. 'remains one of cinema’s most unforgettable rebel yells. Today, the film is considered to be a landmark of British countercultural cinema.
For 'if....' one of Anderson's co-assistants was English film and television director Stephen Frears ('Dangerous Liaisons', 'The Queen'). It was working on the film that Frears got his start in the business.
Anderson is also known for appearing as Master of Caius College at Cambridge University in English film director Hugh Hudson's 1981 British historical sport/drama film 'Chariots of Fire'.
Anderson is perhaps best remembered as a filmmaker for his "Mick Travis trilogy", all of which starred McDowell.
if....' was followed by the 1973 British comedy-drama fantasy satire film 'O Lucky Man!'(a Pilgrim's Progress-inspired road movie) and the 1982 British black comedy/satire film 'Britannia Hospital', a fantasia taking stylistic influence from the populist wing of British cinema represented by Hammer horror films and Carry On comedies.
Anderson had been active from 1948–1993.
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