If.... is superior to A Clockwork Orange
That.
shareProbably but it's silly to compare such diverse films, the only thing linking them is Malcolm McDowell.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail-R.W Emerson
Much is similar about these two movies. Not on the surface though. They are very worth comparing. What else is worth comparing if not two movies that share similar motifs, style. People always respond with you can't compare this, you can't compare that, its just baffling. I'm baffled by people.
shareThere are similarities between both movies aside from Malcolm McDowell appearing in them. Both have elements of rebellion by means of theft and violence. The use of music is also important in both movies. Both movies challenge traditional beliefs within British society. There are a lot of other comparisons too, anyone who has seen both movies can see that.
As for which movie is better than the other, I think A Clockwork Orange has the edge over If...., though people could argue which is better all day.
The Kubrick film is limited, I feel, by its fidelity to its literary source: a one-message tale of a sci-fi future with a dubious point to make. The Anderson film, however, is not tied in that way. It says a great deal more about society in a variety of modes: satirical, elegiac, fantastical, tragic. It's certainly the film McDowell wants to be remembered by.
shareI completely agree about A clockwork orange having a dubious point to make. Not sure it is making any relevant or insightful commentary on society at all, in fact. But the biggest problem with the film is that it ceases to be interesting after Alex is jailed. The story gets stale and loses that sense of mystery and strangeness that propelled the first half. It becomes preachy and less subtle. So I agree that it is limited by its literary source. If... on the other hand is a much more dynamic narrative with a more layered message.
share100% agree with the op, watched both numerous times and If.... is always the one i'd re-watch and re-watch and suggest to others. The similar themes a very promenant insatiable lust, tennage rebellion, extreme violence etc but in many ways i see Clockwork Orange as
a novelty piece.
" i like the trees mikey "
Argh!
I'm drowning in red hot blood that someone even thought this blasphemy.
If.. is awesome,Not as good as O lucky man but still awesome.
Clockwork Orange towers over them all.
'Hey hey mama said the way you move!'
The main thing for me is If hasn't dated at all while ACO's so called futuristic take looks decidedly 1970's.
shareHas Mcdowell said this?
I think the films greatest fault is that it is fairly clumsy at times, Kubrick's looks a little dated also in comparison to his other epics, but doesn't suffer from weak photography at any point.
If.... is fairly clumsy? Weak photography? I'd be interested if you substantiated those, Cademon!
McDowell makes it clear that If.... was his favourite film in the documentary Never Apologize. (Personal gripe: it was never going to be The Artist, was it!)
Haven’t seen The Artist, but I love the reactions to a silent film being top.
Well, Kubrick times his films perfectly to music and compacts high amount of detail into his shots, can you say anything in IF.... is as good or groundbreaking, as the Star Gate sequence from 2001? Or the finale of If.... being as shocking and unsettling yet slightly gratifying, as the first thirty minutes of Clockwork Orange? With If... the grenade attacks looked similar to those shown in “Doctor Who”, which is well known for having cheap effects.
“If....” often ran out of film, and apparently for little artistic reasons, used black and white footage. Would a trained professional photographer believe this should suffice, even in a self admitted surrealist piece of cinema?
Would you say as a fan, that the photography of this picture is something to aspire to? Has it ever being said by anyone and has anyone took notice?
(Malcolm McDowell is onscreen for approximately 10 seconds in The Artist, for no apparent reason at all.)
You select your pick of 'groundbreaking' photography from 2001 and ask for an equivalent in If..... Even if there were no equivalent, that would not make Ondricek's photography 'weak'. Nor are there any grounds, so far as I know, for doubting that Ondricek was a 'trained professional'.
If I accept that Anderson was hamstrung by lack of finance, then that would be an excuse, surely, for declining to compare his film with Kubrick's, who was certainly not so hindered in 2001. The grenade attacks at the end of the former have often confused and startled American viewers, who seem to find it difficult to appreciate that they are deliberately surreal - so for all your 'Dr Who' comparison, they must convince somebody! Anderson was making a Brechtian film, and I do not find the grenade attacks, the black-and-white footage, or any other part of the photography either inappropriate or second-rate.
What ranks with the best of Kubrick in Anderson's film? The gym scene where Bobby Phillips sees Wallace on the bars. The motorcycle scene where the Girl holds her arms outstretched. The beating scene where Peanuts studies life under his microscope. The finale where Mick fires endlessly at us. The fight scene in the Packhorse Cafe.
I was a huge fan of both films. I saw them both in their opening runs in London within nine months in 1968-69 and, in the days before video, re-saw Anderson four times and Kubrick three times within a year. While Kubrick made many good films, Anderson (imho) made only two (If.... and This Sporting Life), for some reason unable to recapture the magic of the former with their sequels O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital. However, in the intervening 40-odd years, I find myself coming down on the side of If... as one of the best of all British films. Maybe it's because I had myself left public school only three years before the film. 2001 was outstanding, and yet I find the sequence you mention the least admirable in the film, however wonderful it looked in Cinerama. A bit showy, a bit meretricious, and not meaning a very great deal. But obviously irresistible to Stanley.
I trust you will also consider "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Tunes of Glory",& "No Night Is Too Long",& "Brideshead Revisited" as amongst the very best of British film, as well as IF....???Certainly it was by far the best made in the 60's.
shareI enjoyed Sunday Bloody Sunday, but Tunes of Glory I remember only from a long-ago TV viewing. I confess to not knowing No Night is Too Long and Brideshead Revisited only as a TV serial.
It's difficult to define a British film when so many these days are really US-financed, influenced and sold. Two of my old favourites are Peter Watkins' The War Game and Brownlow and Mollo's It Happened Here, if only because both seemed to be addressing pressing issues at the time of their making. Many would cite at least something by Powell and Pressburger, and something else by David Lean. What about The Third Man, or do we count that as so Welles-influenced that it ceases to be British?
I shall give you The Third Man as still a Brit. film.
The others you mentioned I haven't seen.
...which is surely a feature of any 'best' list?
It was a long time before I had seen any of the films listed as 'The Best Ten Films Ever' in the mid-sixties when I started serious cinema-going!
Both the films I mentioned were made as a response to the worrying international situation of those days. The Watkins film, which I believe is available on DVD, posits a post-nuclear England in which the structures and systems we were all expected to believe in broke down all too quickly. It Happened Here suggested that the sort of thing we were eager to pretend only Nazi Germany could possibly do might happen a lot nearer home without anyone realising it.
Interesting points of view. Maybe Blunic3 is right.
Both good movies, but I've a preference for "If..." for some reasons, included the people who worked in it. For sure, Lindsay Anderson treated Malcolm McDowell as a friend during his life, while Malcolm said in books and interviews he was disappointed by Kubrick, since after the movie was shot, he never called him again.
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Mick Travis: When do we live? That's what I want to know.
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