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A
Clockwork Orange
(1971)
This film must rank among the most controversial ever made. Set in a near future Britain, the story tells of teenage thug Alex (Malcolm McDowell) who spends his evenings with his gang of "droogs" (friends) drinking drug-laced milk at a "milk-bar", before nights of rape, assault, fighting and stealing. Alex is arrested after a housebreaking goes wrong, resulting in the death of the occupant. Prison doesn't seem to have much effect on him and so, after two years inside, he is sentenced to the "Ludovico Technique" an experiment in brainwashing which aims to make it impossible for the subject to commit any act of violence.
Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel had previously been the subject of a very loose unofficial adaptation by Andy Warhol, called Vinyl (1965) and previous attempts to film the novel had been planned with the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger wanted to play Alex and the rest of the Stones would have been the rest of the gang, the project was abandoned because they couldn't find the time to do it), a gang of teenage girls in miniskirts and a gang of rampaging senior citizens. The resulting film however, is a curious experience. It's certainly not the deathless masterpiece many have acclaimed it as, and looking at it now it has dated oddly, the future depicted in it looking very much the product of the late 1960s and in places it is also quite slow-moving.
It's very stylishly directed by Kubrick, which gives it a dispassionate quality at times, but the mobile camera and extensive point-of-view shots are very effective. The film benefits immeasurably from a superb performance by McDowell as Alex. He is on screen for almost the entire length of the film and it is through him that we see the story (Alex also provides the extensive voice-over narration, constantly addressing his listeners as his friends). McDowell is alternately terrifying, charming, likeable and pitiful in his portrayal. McDowell suffered for his art, though. He got a scratched cornea while filming the brainwashing sequence, he suffered a cracked rib from one scene, and in another was almost drowned. He also made the mistake of telling Kubrick he had a fear of snakes, and came in the next day to find out that Kubrick had given his character a pet snake.
The sex and violence in the film is depicted in a very stylised manner, which makes it all the more disturbing. However the portrayal and, arguable, glamorising of the violence was responsible for much of the controversy that surrounds the film. On Kubrick's orders, McDowell, Burgess and Adrienne Corri (who plays the woman who McDowell rapes while belting out "Singing in the Rain" in the film's most notorious scene) went out on the publicity trail. The three became good friends, but Burgess found himself time after time having to defend the film (which he had nothing to do with, and was based on a book that he never really liked), while McDowell was furious that he had no credit in the opening titles (the only name that appears in the opening credits is Kubrick's).
Anthony Burgess, who died in 1993, was forever associated with the novel (he said in an interview once that "I am glad one of my works is being read, but I am the author of over thirty books and it would be nice if some of the others were read as well"). Burgess got his revenge in 1987 when he adapted A Clockwork Orange as a musical stage play and in the final scene has "a man, bearded like Stanley Kubrick comes on playing, in exquisite counterpoint, "Singin' in the Rain" on a trumpet. He is kicked off stage".
The film was heavily attacked on it's release in Britain for allegedly inspiring "copycat" crimes and in 1974 Kubrick withdrew the film from circulation in Britain specifying that it would never be seen legally in the UK during his lifetime. Of course, a year after his death in 1999, the film was given a successful re-release in Britain.
A Clockwork Orange is inevitably dated, but it has not lost it's power to shock and disturb.
-Robert
Foster
Other
Thoughts: Mark Moreland
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All contents ©
2004-2009 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Stanley
Kubrick
Writer: Stanley
Kubrick, Anthony Burgess
Starring: Malcolm
McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri, Michael Bates, Warren
Clarke, James Marcus
Distributor: Warner
Bros. Pictures
Runtime: 136
min
Rating: R
Release Date: February
2, 1972
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