New Release: If… Blu-ray

By
Laurence
– 05/24/2011Find Others: Blu-ray, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: , , ,
If... movie scene

Malcolm McDowell is Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's 1969 If...

Malcolm McDowell has been pretty busy lately, and we’re not talking about his recent work in such TV projects as Entourage, Heroes, CSI and The Mentalist, but rather all the promotion he’s been doing for the upcoming Warner Home Video releases of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange on Blu-ray and the DVD and for Never Apologize, a film of his one-man stage show that pays tribute to his mentor, filmmaker/stage director Lindsay Anderson.

And speaking of Lindsay Anderson (we call that a segue, in the business), the Criterion Collection released a Blu-ray version of Lindsay Anderson’s memorable youth-in-revolt drama movie If…, starring Malcolm McDowell as the inimitable Mick Travis, on Aug. 30, 2011.

In the film, Mick, with the help of his school buds, challenges authority at every turn and ultimately emerges as a violent savior against the chaos of late 1960s British society.

Mixing color and black and white cinematography (just as it blends fantasy and reality), If…. remains one of the coolest rebel movies.

Criterion previously released a DVD version of If… in 2007, which is still available.

The Blu-ray features a restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by the film’s cinematographer, Miroslav Ondříček, and assistant editor Ian Rakoff, as well as an uncompressed monaural soundtrack.

Here’s a list of the special features:

  • audio commentary with film critic/historian David Robinson and McDowell
  • episode of the Scottish TV series Cast and Crew from 2003, featuring interviews with McDowell, Ondříček, Rakoff, director’s assistant Stephen Frears, producer Michael Medwin and screenwriter David Sherwin
  • video interview with actor Graham Crowden
  • Academy Award-winning documentary Thursday’s Children (1954), about a school for deaf children, by Anderson and Guy Brenton and narrated by actor Richard Burton
  • booklet with an essay by critic David Ehrenstein as well as reprinted pieces by Sherwin and Anderson

 

Buy or Rent If…
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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.