From Seventeen to Seventy
Charles Drazin, writer, editor, film historian
Offering a trenchant, sardonic and coruscatingly lucid commentary on Britain, Lindsay Anderson’s artistic voice – whether in his films, theatre or writings – had the weight of a modern-day Juvenal. But the essential motivation and purpose of that voice can be traced back to his schoolboy years.
In 1968 the stage of the Great Hall of Cheltenham College provided the finale for his most famous film, If…., when the schoolboy rebels, heavily armed with machine-guns and hand grenades, open fire from the roof on the staff, boys and parents pouring out of the Hall into the quad. But the very first time Lindsay put on a show in the Great Hall, he was a schoolboy at Cheltenham himself.
It was 2 December 1940. Only seventeen years old, he was appearing on-stage in a satirical revue called ‘Good and Proper’, which he had organised to raise money for the Spitfire Fund. The roof on which we see Malcolm McDowell with a machine-gun in 1968 is the same roof on which Lindsay spent his spare time fire-watching during the 1940/41 Blitz on Britain. He had experienced the catastrophe of war at first hand. Art was not simply a matter of aesthetics for him. It had a moral purpose.
The schoolboy who put on a show to raise money for the Spitfire Fund would shortly afterwards be conscripted into the army. Discharged from military service with the return of peace, he belonged to a generation that had been enthused by what the film-maker Ken Loach called ‘the spirit of ’45’. It was a generation that hoped to learn from the mistakes of a disastrous past to build a better future.
From seventeen to seventy, Lindsay’s attitude towards his work remained the same. As he once put it: ‘No art is worth much that doesn’t seek to change the world.’
(Images: Cheltenham College memorabilia, ref. LA 6/3/2; military service memorabilia, ref. LA 6/3/3; photographs of Anderson at Cheltenham College, ref. LA 6/2/3/4; photographs of Anderson taken during military service, ref. LA 6/2/3/5.)
