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1968 film "If...."
Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2025 11:40 pm
by oceania
In Lindsay Anderson’s great 1968 film called “If….”:
Denson says “I serve the nation - you haven’t the slightest idea what it means have you?” - showing a badge on his school blazer. To which Travis replies “…you mean that bit of wool on your tit?!”
I’ve always wondered what that badge is and how Denson “serves his nation” more than any other pupil? We do see the whole school in their CCF kit…
Other things:
In my opinion: scum/scumming are much better words than fag/fagging.
When Bobby is scumming for Denson, one of his tasks is to shave him in the morning. Isn't this task a bit over the top for a fag? Also, seems slightly risky trusting a fag - not old enough to shave - with a razor!
Did the violent ending really happen or was it all Travis’ imagination?
You can watch it on YouTube at the moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhUOnEOTq78&t=4154s
Re: 1968 film "If...."
Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2025 8:54 pm
by rockfreak
"If..." is an interesting film. In his book Gilded Youth James Brooke-Smith (kicked out of Shrewsbury school after three years) opines that the film was set in a kind of dreamtime (perhaps in the heyday of the British Empire) when the class system was acted out in miniature in the public schools. In other words, all sorts of old nonsense would have been perpetrated on the younger boys. These ideas obtained for some schools after we lost our empire, as far as I have been able to ascertain. I don't know how far all the old cobblers about school slang, dress codes, seniority privileges and the like persisted at CH. I left in 1960 and they were still firmly entrenched then. I'd like to think they died a natural death as the second half of the 20th century advanced. But you can't be sure. One thing we know persisted at CH into the first year of the 21st was pederasty by some masters. Well it has always been part of the furniture at the public (or should I say pubic) schools.
Re: 1968 film "If...."
Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2025 2:48 pm
by oceania
I’ve added the book to my Amazon basket!
As CH was founded for the poor, it’s interesting how much it managed to imitate the traditions of elite “upper class” public schools.
The official practice of fagging had gone by the 90s. Unofficially, it probably depended on the boarding house you were in - some had a reputation! I remember being genuinely surprised on the last day of my 2nd form: one of the LE opened a tin of Kiwi shoe polish and laughed. I asked what was so funny. He showed me an almost depleted tin and claimed the last time he’d opened it, it was new. He’d managed to get his shoes polished regularly by the 2nd form. Apart from being asked to fetch something on the odd occasion, I managed to get through my first year without knowing this sort of thing went on! I was somewhat unreliable, so I probably wasn't trusted to do the job! I wonder if he was so cocky in September when he started at the bottom of a senior house!
I admit, I had to look up “pederasty”! I guess the problem was public schools’ overreliance on bachelors. But who else was available to supervise breakfast, lunch, sport, tea, prep as well as do their teaching duties. To this day I don’t know how it works – is there a big pay increase when you have boarding house duties etc.
Re: 1968 film "If...."
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2025 9:13 pm
by rockfreak
There's an old saying about teachers: "Men among boys: boys among men". This is probably grossly unfair about most teachers but at CH there were two that perfectly fitted that description and they happened to be my housemasters.
Gordon Pink was Prep B's housemaster and he seemed perfectly content among the company of nine to twelve-year-olds. But before anyone goes "fnurg! fnurg!", it was more than that. Along with his gropings he seemed happy and fulfilled in our company. He knew our nicknames and used them. He obviously enjoyed cracking jokes and having his class in fits. In every other respect he was a nice man. He was a big rugby and cricket fan and clearly loved coaching us. But at the end of one term he addressed the house and said that while we would be looking forward to the holidays, he would not. He would be missing us. How strange, I remember thinking. I'd be only too glad to get shot of sixty of other people's children. In short, I couldn't imagine him in any other role in life.
This was also true of AH Buck, my housemaster in Col B. Only for Buck the classics were a big thing. He too was addicted to sport and in his case favoured boys who excelled at them, but he'd been at CH as a boy, then university, then back to CH as a master. He was clearly addicted to these twin pillars of the public schools over the years - competitive sport and the antics of the ancient Greeks. He probably justified his own antics by the man/boy love that the Greeks were supposed to have indulged in. On one occasion a boy aged about fifteen woke up to find Buck on top of him, outside the blankets, humping his leg. The lad concerned kicked upwards and knocked Buck out. When he was finally sacked I believe a sympathetic Old Blue found him a job at an Oxford publishing company, translating and reading proofs. But when our house captain in my last year went up to Oxford for an interview he sought Buck out, Buck was remorseful and insisted on giving him a letter to take back in which he mentioned everyone of us, along with our characteristics as he remembered them. Wedded to the school indeed.
Re: 1968 film "If...."
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2025 1:20 pm
by marty
oceania wrote: Wed Jun 04, 2025 11:40 pm
In Lindsay Anderson’s great 1968 film called “If….”:
Denson says “I serve the nation - you haven’t the slightest idea what it means have you?” - showing a badge on his school blazer. To which Travis replies “…you mean that bit of wool on your tit?!”
I’ve always wondered what that badge is and how Denson “serves his nation” more than any other pupil? We do see the whole school in their CCF kit…
This is never explained but during speech day the guest of honour is a General Denson - I've always assumed this was a relative (father or grandfather) of the younger Denson
Other things:
In my opinion: scum/scumming are much better words than fag/fagging.
When Bobby is scumming for Denson, one of his tasks is to shave him in the morning. Isn't this task a bit over the top for a fag? Also, seems slightly risky trusting a fag - not old enough to shave - with a razor!
Who knows? The homo-erotic themes with Bobby run throughout the film - see the scene where Wallace is doing his gymnastic routine on the bars.
Did the violent ending really happen or was it all Travis’ imagination?
Probably the latter as the character reappears in the subsequent films in O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital. You'd assume he'd have been locked up for decades if the violent ending really occurred.
You can watch it on YouTube at the moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhUOnEOTq78&t=4154s
Re: 1968 film "If...."
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2025 1:32 pm
by oceania
marty wrote: Fri Jun 13, 2025 1:20 pm
oceania wrote: Wed Jun 04, 2025 11:40 pm
I’ve always wondered what that badge is and how Denson “serves his nation” more than any other pupil? We do see the whole school in their CCF kit…
This is never explained but during speech day the guest of honour is a General Denson - I've always assumed this was a relative (father or grandfather) of the younger Denson
That’s a great catch – the headmaster does indeed refer to a General Denson (he also welcomes a Royal Highness)!
On closer inspection of the film, Denson appears to be head of the CCF. I guess that may make him feel that he really does “serve his nation” more than the others… the badge perhaps being some sort of school CCF leadership badge? One can only assume that the CCF was much more formal in those postwar days and aligned closer with regular military standards…
Re: 1968 film "If...."
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2025 1:48 pm
by oceania
marty wrote: Fri Jun 13, 2025 1:20 pm
oceania wrote: Wed Jun 04, 2025 11:40 pm
In Lindsay Anderson’s great 1968 film called “If….”:
Did the violent ending really happen or was it all Travis’ imagination?
Probably the latter as the character reappears in the subsequent films in O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital. You'd assume he'd have been locked up for decades if the violent ending really occurred.
I was never sure if “O Lucky Man!” was meant to be an actual sequel… but both characters are called Mick Travis, so I guess it probably is! I watched the film in my early 20s - shortly after starting my first lowly office job – and I found it depressing! Perhaps it was meant to be…
“Britannia Hospital” is still on my to do list!
Re: 1968 film "If...."
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 11:05 am
by JustRob
That film is certainly something that I remember.
In 1968 I was a voluntary patient in a mental hospital, having suffered a breakdown through excessive creativity and lateral thinking in my job. There is clearly a limit to just how far outside the box one should think and I had crossed a long way over it, but my employers were very happy with the results and were keen to get me back at work when I was fit again.
One day my father visited me at the hospital and we went into town and watched the current film showing at the local cinema, which happened to be "If....". Bearing in mind that I was an Old Blue who had left the school just five years earlier and was currently still in the process of reconnecting with reality perhaps it wasn't the ideal film for me to have watched but under the circumstances I really enjoyed it and even maybe related to it, having in my final year as a button Grecian myself become disillusioned about the boarding school life. Perhaps the rebellious pupils in the film did overreact though.
In 2000 I took early retirement from the same employers that I'd had in 1968, with whom I had acquired a long-standing reputation for providing highly original solutions to problems after having learned from past experience exactly where the boundary to safe lateral thinking lay, and I became a donation governor of CH. After the court meeting at the school just a few days ago I had an opportunity to chat to my current presentee. She is an exemplary pupil who has just finished her second year at CH so I felt safe in pointing out to her that keeping a clean slate until one is a Grecian is the best strategy at CH because then they can't do much about your behaviour, whatever it is. After twenty-five years as a governor perhaps I'm now surreptitiously working off my feelings about "If...." in my new relationship with the school. However, if I remember correctly at the end of the film the school staff and governors were shooting back ....