Lindsay Anderson's film if...(1968), starring Malcolm McDowell as a schoolboy who leads a guerilla insurgence, imagines how repression, conformity, and fusty ritual at an English public school could lead to anarchy and bloody revolt. Its title is a sardonic nod to Rudyard Kipling's most famous poem, and its story a radical updating of Kipling's 1899 story Stalky and Co., in which prankish rebels are groomed to police the empire. Released at a time of unprecedented student uprisings in Europe and America, if...provided a peculiarly English perspective on the battle between...