Words
‘If’ fifty years on Hugh Wright ponders the significance of the unopened letter Film director Linday Anderson on the set of If
Little did either David Ashcroft, the Headmaster of Cheltenham College, or Old Cheltonian film director Lindsay Anderson know when they met fifty years ago in September 1967 to discuss a proposal to film ‘If’ at the College, that it would have such a universal and lasting impact. Its insights into why and how young people can be radicalized and turn to extreme violence have in recent years become even more relevant than they were when the film was released. In November 1968, a week after it was first shown, Lindsay Anderson received a letter from David Ashcroft, who had been invited to the private view by way of thanks for allowing the College to be used as the main location. This letter remained unopened on the Director’s mantelpiece for seven years. Malcolm McDowell, who was the lead in three of Lindsay Anderson’s films, said that the reason Lindsay Anderson did not open it was that he did not want to read, ‘You betrayed us’. I doubt, as events have shown, that this was what the letter said. When both were invited to write about ‘If’ for this magazine twenty-five years later, they responded in very different ways. They would never agree on what had happened at that first meeting, let alone on all that followed, and it was, sadly, the last piece that Lindsay Anderson wrote, since he died a few weeks
later. So the fact that David Ashcroft’s letter remained unopened for so long should perhaps remain as his only, if unspoken and unadmitted, sign of remorse. There is no doubt that he knew that he had not leveled with the school about the nature or the message of the film that he was allowed to shoot there. The script shown after their first meeting bore little relation to the one used for the filming. Lindsay Anderson wrote a letter to David Ashcroft in 1968 from Paris, while working there on the film, saying that the Sorbonne riots of that year had begun to be serious and that he wanted to ‘turn the screw a bit’. He did not say what that meant, nor reveal fully the extent of the changes that would ensue. The cast of the film, who were put up by the staff while filming, expressed surprise at the time that they were being allowed to make it, and admired the imagination this showed. Both men deserve credit. After all, it won the Palm D’Or at Cannes that year and has never stopped being shown since. David Ashcroft concluded in his C&CR article on it twentyfive years later that it was a very good film indeed and that he found living with the event stimulating and enjoyable. Lindsay Anderson was prophetic in ways that become clearer as time passes. His film, by not being set in an exact period and with no
Autumn 2017
CCR Vol54 no3 Autumn 2017.indd 47
47
22/08/2017 15:57
