if....

Name: if....
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ISBN: 9781839029929

Mark Sinker

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Paperback

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English

BFI Publishing
30 April 2026

Film theory & criticism; Film movie guides & reviews; Film & movie: styles & genres

Series: BFI Film Classics

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 Anderson’s depiction of the progress from repression, conformity and fusty ritual to anarchy and bloody revolt. The film’s title is a sardonic nod to Rudyard Kipling’s 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 Anderson’s 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.

By: Mark Sinker
Imprint: BFI Publishing
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: 2nd edition
Dimensions: Height: 188mm, Width: 134mm, Spine: 8mm
Weight: 180g
ISBN: 9781839029929
ISBN 10: 1839029927
Series: BFI Film Classics
Pages: 112
Publication Date: 30 April 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acknowledgments Foreword to the 2026 edition 'if....' Appendix: Lindsay Anderson and Free Cinema Notes Credits

Mark Sinker is a writer and editor based in Plymouth, UK. He edited The Wire in the 1990s and has written for publications including Sight and Sound, 4Columns and the London Review of Books. His book A Hidden Landscape Once a Week: The Unruly Curiosity of the UK Music Press in the 1960s–80s, in the Words of Those Who Were There was published in 2019.

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if....

Mark Sinker

$26.99

Paperback

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