Classic Film Review: Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange: Leigh Maddox

The first time I heard of A Clockwork Orange was during an English lesson at secondary school. My teacher at the time reminisced that one of her great teenage rebellions back in the 1970s was to watch Stanley Kubrick’s portrayal of juvenile delinquent Alex de Large: a film that not only her parents objected to, but that had been banned by the British Government on the request of its very creator. In contemporary times it is perhaps hard to understand how watching a movie could be considered a “teenage rebellion”. Undoubtedly most of us have watched movies that mum and dad deemed inappropriate, but A Clockwork Orange was much more culturally significant than this minor, modern up yours to our parents.

Kubrick’s film was released to the British public in 1971 and, although violent for the time, featuring scenes of sadistic violence and rape, it was by no means unique. Indeed, the film was affected by unusually bad timing. In the same year three other movies with explicit violence made general release: Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, William Friedkin’s The French Connection and Don Sigel’s Dirty Harry. The press were sent into a fury over the excessive violence now appearing in cinemas and cases of copycat violence were wildly publicized. Unfortunately, Kubrick and Peckinpah suffered badly in this media engagement: Straw Dogs was unequivocally censored, whilst Clockwork was retracted by its director, falling into notoriety before its eventual re-release in the UK in 2000.

In the US, Clockwork endured. It was nominated for four Oscars and even the lengthily titled United States Conference of the Catholic Bishop’s Office for Film and Broadcasting, rating the film 'C' ('C' for condemned to hell), could not seal its fate. Perhaps the main reason for this was that youth culture in America had been established for a number years before Alex revelled in his “ultra-violence”. The disillusioned, angry youth had been epitomized by James Dean 15 years earlier in Rebel Without A Cause and rock ‘n’ roll music, although widely criticised on moral grounds, was clearly here to stay. Britain in the early ‘70s however, still contained the last dregs of post-war conservative traditionalism clashing with youth culture. Alex, jaunting around a dystopian future Britain committing sadistic acts with his iconic bowler hat, braces and cane (all symbolic of the British middle-class), was a perfect target for BBFC officials.

Enter our “humble narrator” Alex: a 15-year-old whose primary interests are rape, violence and Beethoven.

It is perhaps a testament to the notoriety caused by Kubrick’s retraction that subsequent BBFC administrations kept the film banned until only 7 years ago. However, there is much more to Clockwork than it’s renderings of violence. The film, based on Anthony Burgess’s 1959 novel, is set in a dystopian near-future where a totalitarian government is attempting to hold back the tide of violence and social decay via behavioural conditioning, dubbed “the Ludovico Project”. Enter our “humble narrator” Alex: a 15-year-old whose primary interests are rape, violence and Beethoven. When an attempted robbery goes seriously wrong and Alex is betrayed by his fellow “droogs”, he is committed to prison, eventually volunteering himself for the controversial rehabilitation programme. Injected with an experimental drug and forced to watch violent movies whilst the 9th symphony plays over the speakers, Alex soon responds to the treatment: a death-like paralysis when contemplating violence, sexual acts and unfortunately when listening to his beloved Beethoven. He is finally released, defenceless against his previous victims, his past gang mates and corrupt politicians with sinister intentions.

'A Clockwork Orange' is not just a violent movie, it is also incredibly socially relevent, picking up themes of the individual versus the state and youth versus age.

Kubrick’s cinematic version of Clockwork is relatively faithful to Burgess’s original novel, but is deliberately a modified work. The novel’s rendering of a society implicit in the violence it attempts to sterilise is nicely transmuted into Kubrick’s continuing exploration of the effects of cinema as a cultural medium, particularly voyeurism. One of the film’s most notorious scenes in which Alex and his gang enter a home, rape a woman and force her husband to watch, occurs to the tune of “Singin’ in the Rain”. The impact of what is taking place does not fully enter your head, until the singing stops, Alex leers into the camera and says jauntily, “Viddy well little brother. Viddy well”: highlighting of the audience’s familiarity with cinematic violence. We are, after all, Alex’s “only friends”.

A Clockwork Orange is not just a violent movie, it is also incredibly socially relevent, picking up themes of the individual versus the state and youth versus age. This means that it will remain one of the most enduring cult classics of all time. Watching it you cannot help but be reminded of ASBOs, fundamentalist terrorism or even some of our contemporary politicians. Malcolm McDowell is perfectly psychotic in perhaps the only significant role of his career, rolling of nadsat with Shakespearean grandeur. Also take a moment to listen to Wendy Carlos’ soundtrack comprising of futuristic and atmospheric moog modifications of the Beethoven canon. Undoubtedly, however, what makes this film work is Kubrick’s direction, from his attention to detail to his cinematic self-consciousness, and at the very least his insertion of Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” may be one of the most inspired and ingenious directorial moments of all time.