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Bridging Jean Vigo's Zero for Conduct and Gus Van Sant's Elephant, this chilly social satire from 1968 also marks the starting point of Malcolm McDowell's career. Making his entrance with a mustache hidden under a scarf, the actor who would soon immortalize suave nihilism in A Clockwork Orange says it all a mere ten minutes into the movie: "My face is a never-fading source of wonder to me." Today the actor lends his burst-tomato nose to a host of formulaic villains--sadistic criminals, corporate CEOs, Russian serial killers--but here the man is much more troubling: Handsome, boyish, and deadly serious, McDowell's young Mick Travis knows something that we don't. Together with his lads, all of them itching to throw a monkey wrench into the gears of their English boarding school, Travis papers the dormitory with cutout collages of sex and violence, sips straight vodka, and muses on the worst ways to die. As this hellish clique inches toward the breaking point, director Lindsay Anderson quietly fleshes out daily life at "College House" with episodic accounts of rituals, punishments, and sermons on loyalty, subservience, and obedience. The movie makes a somewhat obvious point: that a culture built on war and military discipline is a recipe for disaster when it collides head-on with rebellious youth. But Anderson allows McDowell to deliver that point with staggering conviction. "One man can change the world," Travis says, "with a bullet in the right place."(John Behling)
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