Thread: The movie that made me switch to wet shaving

I only ever remember my father using electric razors and when I started to shave in about 1974 my father bought me a battery operated Phillishave. All this was changed two years later by a movie I watched: Lindsay Anderson's cult classic If.... .

There are two shaving scenes, both very brief. In the first the 17 or 18 year old schoolboy hero uses aerosol foam and a cut throat to remove the moustache he had grown during the vacation:





The hold and angle are really weird here and the continuity does not seem quite right, but I didnt notice at the time. Malcolm McDowell doesn't seem to be really shaving or know how to.

In the second shaving scene we don't see any shaving at all, only the lathering of the face of the sadistic and moralistic prefect by his gorgeous "fag" (fag is an English slang term for young schoolboys who were obliged to act as servants for older boys who had been appointed prefects and does not carry the US meaning of a derogatory expression for a gay person). This time the lathering is done by a brush.









The film is a biting and at times surreal satire on the English class system set in traditional boys' public (ie private in US terminology) school. The revolutionary subtext is all rather obvious and puerile (very 1968) but the film captures the essence of these schools in the 1950s/60s/early 70s perfectly. I was at such a school when I saw the film and was blown over by it.

Fagging and the practice of allowing older boys almost complete sway over the younger boys in their boarding houses, allowing them to administer corporal punishment and the near total absence of teachers or other adults are long gone. Such schools now resemble luxury holiday camps.

Dario argento's film
But the razor was used to cut the throat
So I asked myself: This blade, in addition to cutting throats, what of that? : D: D

Originally Posted by kratos86

Dario argento's film
But the razor was used to cut the throat
So I asked myself: This blade, in addition to cutting throats, what of that? : D: D

Tenebre