If....

Year of Release:  1968
Director:  Lindsay Anderson
Screenplay:  David Sherwin, based on the script The Crusaders by David Sherwin and John Howlett
Starring:  Malcolm McDowell, Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, David Wood, Robert Swann, Peter Jeffrey
Running Time:  107 minutes
Genre:  Drama, satire

The film is set in an all-male British boarding school where the pupils lives are ruled by meaningless tradition, and bullying, predatory prefects (known as "Whips") who force the younger boys (who are referred to as "scum") to act as their personal servants.  The headmaster (Jeffrey) is completely ineffectual and out of touch, and the rest of the adults are either bullies, weird or ineffective or a combination of the three.  Mick Travis (McDowell), Knightly (Wood) and Wallace (Warwick), three senior boys, start to rebel and soon become a problem to the staff and Whips.  After a particularly brutal beating, the three boys plot violent revenge for the school's Founder's Day celebration.

Lindsay Anderson, who himself attended boarding school, had a reputation for tough, social realist films such as This Sporting Life (1963), and this film mixes gritty realism with surreal flights of fantasy.  The early scenes introduce the daily life of the school, depicting the traditions, and casual cruelties that Mick and friends are rebelling against.  The picture switches, seemingly randomly, between colour and black-and-white.  Apparently because it was easier to film the scenes in the chapel in black-and-white rather than colour, and Anderson liked the effect and decided to use it throughout the film.  There are memorably bizarre sequences, such as where McDowell flirts with a waitress (Noonan) in a cafe and they end up wrestling naked on the cafe floor impersonating tigers, and a scene where a character, who has seemingly been killed earlier, pops up in a drawer to shake hands with his supposed killers.  This is very much a film about the late 1960s.  It's a counterculture film, about the struggle between old and new ideas that were going on in Britain at the time.  Despite it being very much a product of it's time it is still weirdly relevant today, in it's depiction of old versus young, albeit in possibly the most privileged place imaginable.  The violent climax, which involves a gun battle at the school, is possibly even more disturbing now than it was at the time. This is a deeply disturbing film, that still packs a punch, but it is also very funny, and features a star-making performance from Malcolm McDowell, in his film debut.         
 McDowell and Anderson reunited with writer David Sherwin for two subsequent films, O Lucky Man! (1971) and Britannia Hospital (1983),  in which McDowell reprised the role of Mick Travis, albeit as a very different character each time.  Both of them are very well worth checking out, if you can find them.

Richard Warwick, Malcolm McDowell and David Wood in If....

A Clockwork Orange

Year of Release:  1971
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay:  Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Starring:  Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri, Miriam Karlin
Running Time:  136 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction, crime

Near future England:  Teenage gang leader Alex (McDowell) leads his three friends (or "droogs") on nightly rampages of theft and savage violence against whoever is unlucky enough to encounter them.  Tiring of Alex's arrogance, his friends set him up to be arrested after their latest attack goes fatally wrong.  Alex is convicted and sentenced to fourteen years in prison.  After two years inside, Alex is submitted to an experimental treatment called the "Ludovico Technique" which is intended to cure criminality by making the subject unable to act violently.  Alex is released after the treatment and soon finds that where he was once the predator, he is now the prey.

This is hugely controversial film which is now acclaimed as a modern classic.  It is still a shocking film, in fact I would say that it would probably not get made today. because it would just be too problematic, with the way sexual violence is presented.  Not necessarily because of the on-screen violence, which is heavily stylised and more shadowplay than graphic blood and gore, but because we are invited to like and sympathise with a  brutal, unrepentant rapist and murderer.  The entire film is shown through Alex's eyes, and he breaks the fourth wall with his voice-over narration (addressing the audience directly as "my brothers and only friends").  The first part of the film, depicting Alex's crimes is heavily stylised, whereas the latter part of the film, where Alex becomes the victim, the violence is much more realistically depicted thereby inviting the audience to enjoy Alex's rampages at a distance, but to sympathise with his own sufferings.  Which is, of course, how Alex would see it.  Also there is the towering performance of Malcolm McDowell as Alex, alternately threatening and innocent, fearsome and funny, it is a career best performance, and he is in pretty much every scene of the film.  No-one else really gets to make much of an impact in the film, or even get a lot of screen time.
The film is relatively faithful to the novel, although it discards the final chapter of the original, British version of the book.  There are some odd elements in regards to the book, in which Alex's age is stated as being fourteen.  Malcolm McDowell was in his late twenties when he made the film, and yet he is constantly referred to as a child, despite being clearly an adult.
The film depicts a very seventies future, and it really is a product of it's time and place, it feels more like an alternate early seventies than a futuristic piece.  The novel was written in an invented slang called "Nadsat" and this is memorably retained in the film, although toned down.  Burgess invented nadsat because he felt that if he wrote it in then-current slang then novel would feel dated as soon as it was published, and he was right.
Alex has a deep love of classical music (especially Beethoven) and music is used throughout the film, often contrasting with the images on screen.  One of the film's most notorious scenes has McDowell singing "Singin' in the Rain" while he brutally attacks a husband and wife (Patrick Magee and Adrienne Corri).
The film was famously withdrawn from release in Britain by Kubrick himself and was not legally available there until after his death.

Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange

The Artist

Year:  2011
Director:  Michel Hazanavicius
Screenplay: Michel Hazanavicius
Starring:  Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, James Cromwell, John Goodman, Missi Pyle, Penelope Ann Miller, Malcolm McDowell
Genre:  Silent, drama, comedy, romance
Running Time:  100 minutes

The middle of January is obviously way too early to be talking about the greatest film of the year, but if it manages to produce anything to top The Artist than 2012 will go down as one of the greatest years in movie history.  I'm not even joking.  A black and white, French, silent film with no stars, might sound like box-office poison, at least outside of the art-house circuit and Film Festivals.  However this film has been met with rapturous critical reception and large audiences.  It is immediately obvious why when you see it because it is absolutely fantastic.

The film opens in Hollywood in 1927.  The biggest star of the day is matinee idol George Valentin (Dujardin) who has been hugely successful in a string of comic adventure films with his adorable little performing dog, Jack (Uggie the dog).  One night after a premiere he literally bumps into a young aspiring actress, Peppy Miller (Bejo), whom he helps to get her first big break.  However, Valentin's position at the top of the tree is threatened by the latest technological innovation:  sound cinema (aka "the talkies").  Initially dismissing sound as a passing fad, Valentin finds himself unable to adapt to this new style, and soon finds himself on a relentless downward spiral, while Peppy goes from strength to strength fast becoming the biggest star in Hollywood.

This charming and endlessly stylish film perfectly recreates the world of silent film, featuring such out-dated techniques as irises, wipes and intertitles.  The two lead actors give superb performances, with Jean Dujardin expertly playing the charismatic leading man, and also allowing the audience to see his darker side in the later parts of the film.  Berneice Bejo is effortlessly engaging as Peppy, and the two handle the physical sielnt comedy perfectly.  The score is brilliant, although it's inclusion of Bernard Herrmann's love theme from the movie Vertigo (1958) has proven controversial due to the hostile reaction it provoked from the actress Kim Novak, who starred in Vertigo.    

Despite being very much a tribute to the cinema of the past, this is still accessible for modern audiences.  Those who worship at the shrines of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin will doubtless love it but it will also entertain those who seem to think that cinema started with Star Wars (1977).   If nothing else it will introduce the magical world of silent cinema to a whole new audience and that is enough in itself  to make it an unqualified success. 

Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo are all smiles in The Artist