The Sex Gourmet – IF… (1968)

#7 Malcolm McDowell & Christine Noonan

My fellow Sex Gourmets,

today we take a look at Lindsay Anderson’s classic ‘If…’ (1968). Here, we have a rare exemplary of a sex scene managing the impossible limbo between half-way hinted sex and a pure animalistic attack.

The semester has just started at one of the renowned grey British private schools. For the students strict discipline, endless humiliation, and occasional abuse by teachers and older students are daily routine. As is the oppression of sexuality for this is a traditional boys boarding school. The three friends Mick, Johnny and Wallace have only hatred left for the degenerated elitist school system and it all takes a pretty revengeful end.

The cinematography of ‘If…’ suddenly changes to black and white when Malcolm McDowell (as Mick Travis) and his friend Johnny (David Wood) walk into a sparse cafe that is empty except for a smashing brunette waitress (Christine Noonan). They order coffee and have a good look at her butt and overall nice female curves, something they don’t see that often. Malcolm asks for sugar- don’t we all want sugar- and Christine leans slightly forward to hand it to him.

Without any warning, the white light enters Malcolm and he grabs her by the wrist, brutally pulls her over the counter towards him, and forces his mouth on her neck. Christine frees herself and gives him a strong slap, whereupon he withdraws from her with a contemptuous look. No word is spoken after this sudden outbreak, Malcolm quietly pours two spoons of sugar in his small cup and walks away. But we get a second act.

As Malcolm walks to the jukebox which plays beautiful sacral music with angelic choirs, his personal angel arrives without a warning: Christine walks to him and puts her hand on his shoulder, and when he turns around she starts to talk in a way that can only be described as beautifully unfiltered primalstream-of-conciousness:

„Go on. Look at me. Look at my eyes. I’ll kill you. Sometimes I stand in front of the mirror and my eyes get bigger and bigger. And I’m like a tiger. I like tigers. Rrrrah!

We have now entered a zone of feral honesty and a feverous sexuality where death is a possibility. I’ll kill you… An irresistibly attractive Malcolm looks at Noonan and his looks burn black like coal. He looks at his potential pairing partner as if she was a fig that he wants to devour unpeeled. But first he has to inhale her, smell her like a predator, his nose twitching yet with the reserved elegance and menace of a panther. Once fully inhaled, his features derail and he hisses like a tiger, which is the initiation to the highly animalistic pairing dance that will take place now.

The cafe is the arena of these two, they hiss and roar, pull out their claws and try to scratch each other, always at a distance, always on the lurk, with the will to eat and survive. The sacral music in the background mixes with wild jungle sounds and the grunts and roars of these wildcats now. They caress each other with their mouths and sharp teeth, biting and utilizing it like wildcats, wondrously not seriously harming each other in this wild attack.

Suddenly the screen flashes and we see the same scene through an X-Ray lense: both naked now, Noonan has wrestled McDowell down, grabs his wrist and bites it relentlessly, incessantly. Clenching his other fist, McDowell is screaming and roaring, his face a mixture of pain and pleasure.

Then cut to the silence of the cafe, back to the friend Johnny who is sitting at the table, drinking his coffee in solitude. We hear a door open and shut, and Noonan walks to his table and sits down at the place next to him, with a gentle smile now and purring like a cat. McDowell sits down in front of them, strirring in his cold coffee. It is an unusual but oddly logical post-coital scene. Like no conventional act has been shown, no conventional affection or romanticism is shown either. This was no lustful play, but a sudden and crude outbreak of oppressed sexuality and everyday frustration, a hopeless introspective for two.

That this scene is the only one in black and white throughout the film is no coincedence- it highlights an unusuality. So while at first it seems like a contradiction that the horrible school routine is being depicted as colorful while an unhinged outbreak in freedom is held in black and white, with a second thought it seems to be logical to emphasize the singular quality of this event and layer it with melancholy and nostalgia right at the moment that it is happening. This is no saving or redemption, in the end they still have to go back to school and kill them all, sorry.

Giving away the best rating : 10/10 – Virtuos cinematography of painful oppression

by Saliha Enzenauer