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Product Description

A jolting tale of crime and punishment stars Malcolm McDowell as a young neo-punk who becomes the guinea pig for a state-sanctioned cure of his tendency toward ?the old ultraviolence.

Amazon.com

Stanley Kubrick's striking visual interpretation of Anthony Burgess's famous novel is a masterpiece. Malcolm McDowell delivers a clever, tongue-in-cheek performance as Alex, the leader of a quartet of droogs, a vicious group of young hoodlums who spend their nights stealing cars, fighting rival gangs, breaking into people's homes, and raping women. While other directors would simply exploit the violent elements of such a film without subtext, Kubrick maintains Burgess's dark, satirical social commentary. We watch Alex transform from a free-roaming miscreant into a convict used in a government experiment that attempts to reform criminals through an unorthodox new medical treatment. The catch, of course, is that this therapy may be nothing better than a quick cure-all for a society plagued by rampant crime. A Clockwork Orange works on many levels--visual, social, political, and sexual--and is one of the few films that hold up under repeated viewings. Kubrick not only presents colorfully arresting images, he also stylizes the film by utilizing classical music (and Wendy Carlos's electronic classical work) to underscore the violent scenes, which even today are disturbing in their display of sheer nihilism. Ironically, many fans of the film have missed that point, sadly being entertained by its brutality rather than being repulsed by it. --Bryan Reesman

Product details

Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.66:1
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ Unrated (Not Rated)
Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 5.5 x 0.25 inches; 3.2 Ounces
Director ‏ : ‎ Stanley Kubrick
Media Format ‏ : ‎ Anamorphic, Color, Subtitled, Widescreen, Dolby
Run time ‏ : ‎ 2 hours and 17 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ October 23, 2007
Actors ‏ : ‎ Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke, John Clive
Dubbed: ‏ : ‎ French, Spanish
Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese
Studio ‏ : ‎ Warner Home Video
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000I2IZHK
Writers ‏ : ‎ Anthony Burgess, Stanley Kubrick
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 2

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Violence and society's attempt to control it

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 19, 2022

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A Clockwork Orange was Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of a book of the same name. It’s one of the greatest and most disturbing dystopian tales put to film. It focuses upon violence and how society’s attempt to control it leads to abuses.

The movie centers around Alex (Malcolm McDowell) who is the leader of a small gang. They partake in Ultra-violence which are random acts of beatings, theft and rape. The start of the film documents that with a beating of a drunk, a gang fight, and a home invasion and rape.

Once the violence in society was established the second part of the story covers how the authorities dealt with it. Alex is imprisoned and goes through a radical re-education process meant to rid him of his anti-social tendencies. He’s basically brainwashed to get a sick and revolting feeling anytime he thinks about violence or sex. This is a critique of the government that wants to control society and will go to extreme measures to do so. There’s also hints that it wants to use these same techniques against dissenters as the Interior Minister (Anthony Sharp) talks about needing prisons for political prisoners and a critic of the government being imprisoned at the end. There’s also commentary about how society in general is violent, which is shown in several subsequent scenes.

There are plenty of dystopian stories but A Clockwork Orange stands out above all of them with its unique vision about violence and governance.

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Film Buff

Kubrick's dazzling satire works real horrorshow

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 1, 2018

Rich, powerful and disturbing, Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s Swiftian/dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange tapped into a universal contemporary concern which was affecting (and continues to affect) the very foundation of Western society. In Dr. Strangelove it was the fear of nuclear apocalypse, in 2001 it was the Cold War space race and in A Clockwork Orange it was the upsurge of inner city youth gang-oriented sex and violence protesting against the increasingly pervasive clockwork nature of modern society. As befits a director firmly committed to a dialectical worldview, all three films are each effectively two films in one with Kubrick crafting a purely commercial main text which operates in tandem with a deeply intellectual subtext which actually conveys the meat of what he is trying to say. Dr. Strangelove’s deep anxiety about where Western society is going is filtered through knock-about hilarious farce while 2001’s deeply metaphysical meditation on the nature of Mankind lies beneath a Boys’ Own acid trip to Jupiter and into the infinite with great emphasis on the commercial ‘Wow!’ factor. A Clockwork Orange offers a penetrating discussion about the loss of ethical choice through psychological conditioning via a satire which posits the hero Alex (Malcolm McDowell) both as a victim of a clockwork modern age and as an artist-doppelgänger figure representing Kubrick/Burgess. Alex is the vicious leader of a youth gang who enjoys inflicting ‘ultraviolence,’ raping and pillaging indiscriminately. Kubrick retains Burgess’s first person narration so that the main commercial text is controversially a celebration of Alex’s wanton sex and violence as we see and enjoy everything through his perspective as the best time of his (and our!) life. Made on the back of infamous films such as Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch and Midnight Cowboy and contemporary with Straw Dogs, the film cynically cashes in on the commercial value of sex (replete with full frontal nudity) and extreme violence to make for a commercial hit which equaled the success achieved by 2001. Controversy rages on about the film seeming to inspire a spate of crime across the UK which resulted in Kubrick withdrawing the film from distribution there. Obviously many people watched (and continue to watch) the film purely for its sensational aspects and there would be justification for seeing it as both ‘sick’ and ‘dangerous’ if the surface commercial text is all there is to it. Clearly though, there is a lot more to the film than that. As Burgess went to great pains to point out after the release, the sex and violence isn’t gratuitous at all if the points he (and Kubrick) try to make are given due consideration. For me the film possesses great artistic integrity and is a dazzling piece of filmmaking which fully matches the source material in almost every respect. I had once considered it to be somewhat beneath Kubrick’s best which I have always taken to be Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, Barry Lyndon and The Shining, but on revisiting it and also re-reading Burgess’s book I now see the narrative to be on a par with the obvious visual brilliance and would now talk about a ‘Big 6’ as opposed to a ‘Big 5.’

The first thing to stress is how faithful the film is to the book. It was Kubrick’s first solo writing effort and he has made a point of saying he was “happy to skip the birth pangs of developing an original narrative” when it came to writing the script which he did alone without Burgess. The film follows the book’s three act structure, retains much of the dialog and changes very little along the way. In some ways the book is more shocking. There Alex is 15 (McDowell is obviously older), the three-way orgy involves drugging two 10 year old girls (the girls on screen are again older and also don’t need to be drugged) and Alex brutally beats a cellmate to death in prison (Kubrick points up Alex’s ‘innocence’ of any crime while being imprisoned). What can be seen however is always going to be more shocking than what one merely reads and as Burgess says (and Kubrick quotes exactly), “It’s funny how the colours of the like real world only seem real when you viddy them on the screen.” In this way Alex and his fellow droogs’ joyride of violence, rape and murder comes across “real horrorshow” as does the government’s counter-violence committed on Alex through psychological conditioning and the removal of his ability to defend himself against the very victims he earlier wronged. Burgess puts it very clearly when he said, “The film and the book are about the danger of reclaiming sinners through sapping their capacity to choose between good and evil. Most of all, I wanted to show in my story that God made man free to choose either good or evil and that is an astounding gift.” Clearly Kubrick is at one with this and stresses mainly through the prison chaplain (Godfrey Quigley) that man ceases to be a man once moral choice is denied to him. Alex’s evil is therefore much lesser than that of the state. Good is only ‘good’ if it is chosen, not imposed, and Kubrick was very sensitive at the time to answering ideas raised by psychologist B. F. Skinner who suggested people can be conditioned into behaving well. Kubrick said, “I like to believe Skinner is wrong and that what is sinister is that this philosophy may serve as the intellectual basis for some sort of scientifically oriented repressive government.” The film then is on one level a prophetic warning of what could happen in the future if man’s ethical right to choose is ever denied.

The one big difference between film and book comes in Kubrick deciding to stay with the American version of the text which axed Burgess’s original final chapter. Burgess wanted to stress Alex’s story as a cycle of childhood ending with him waking up to his moral responsibility as a social person and actually growing up. Meeting ex-fellow droog Pete he is inspired to choose a normal life, get a job, find a wife and have kids. Kubrick had no truck with this softening once he discovered it and decided to end his film with Alex returned to his prior free state. This says everything about the central difference between the two artists. On one hand there is the Catholic writer coming to terms with the brutal beating inflicted on his first wife by a gang of American soldiers at the end of World War 2. Having lived through the era of the Teddy Boys, the Mods and the Rockers he felt the instinct to craft a morality fable with hope offered at the end. On the other hand is the Jewish American director who is less concerned with Christian morality than he is with painting a balanced picture of social good and evil in binary terms which tally with his misanthropic worldview, his nagging misogyny and his belief in man creating systems of control which end up controlling him. Crucially, Alex starts in the primal state of freedom and finishes there after having it taken away from him. To qualify the symmetry of the film’s examination of good and evil with Alex ‘growing up’ would run counter to Kubrick’s sour view of mankind. It would also contradict a central point of the film – that this ‘growing up’ is part of the very clockwork process that is Kubrick’s (if not Burgess’s) target of attack. Alex isn’t the only one to be psychologically conditioned through watching films. We are also subjecting ourselves to the same process taking the place of Alex chained to his wheelchair looking straight at images on a screen as well as representing exactly what Alex is looking at and being conditioned by. Implicit within the central argument of the film is the idea that we are all clockwork oranges conditioned by hidden powers to think this and do that, and (in an important Freudian binary) that Alex “represents the id, the savage repressed side of our nature which guiltlessly enjoys the same pleasures of rape” (Kubrick) while the authority figures we see represent the ego trying to contain the id’s desire to express itself. Of course, in the topsy-turvy satire of this film where the id plays narrator these authority figures are all depicted as far worse than “Your Humble Narrator Alex.” It is to be noted that Burgess didn’t reject Kubrick’s reinterpretation. Far from it, he so appreciated what the director had done with his book that he didn’t mind at all the credit “Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange” and also seriously considered that his American publisher as well as Kubrick may have been right to discard his final chapter after all.

Though it’s far from obvious on a single view, key to this film’s greatness is its beautifully balanced dialectical narrative structure which comes straight down from Burgess, but which is bound out of an extraordinary series of binary combinations wholly characteristic of Kubrick and which rivals and perhaps even surpasses what the director later achieved on The Shining. Burgess’s book is split into three parts, each part into seven chapters which added together make 21, the age at which adulthood is reached. To make the symmetry and binary combinations clear I have posted a summary of the film as a comment at the foot of this review which I refer to in the following discussion.

First we notice the film begins and ends in Alex’s primal state as a completely free spirit. This is encapsulated further in the first and last scenes of the film, the opening slow reverse dolly gradually revealing the Korova Milkbar (Part 1, Sc.1 [1]) where Alex and his droogs are readying themselves for their ultraviolence and the closing static mid-shot of Alex cavorting with a naked girl in the snow (Part 3, Sc.2 [6]) while toffs in sophisticated clothes look down and applaud from what appears to be the members enclosure of Ascot racecourse. Both shots are exactly symmetrical and are dominated by the naked female form. Each of the three parts can be split into two collections of scenes which balance each other as well as themselves. Part 1, Scene 1 charts the journey from the attack on the tramp (Paul Farrell), through the casino fight with Billyboy and his droogs, the Durango 95 joy-ride, the vicious attack on Mr. Alexander (Patrick Magee) and his wife (Adrienne Corri), a return to the Korova where Alex offends Dim (Warren Clarke) and then a return home to a masturbatory orgy listening to the scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as Alex imagines three apocalyptic visions – a hanging with Alex as Dracula, rocks falling in a Raquel Welch film and a nuclear explosion. The Korova Milkbar sequences (Sc.1 [1] & [6]) frame the scene with this final orgy (Sc.1 [7]) posted as a fashed and fagged epilogue which finds it’s echo in Part 2, Sc.1 [3] where Alex imagines three visions from the Bible – himself as a Roman centurion whipping Christ bearing the cross, as a Roman soldier in battle and as a Roman enjoying three girls in erotic abandon in another completely symmetrical composition. Furthermore, the various victims of Part 1, Scene 1 reappear in Part 3, Scene 1 to exact their revenge on a now defenseless Alex. The Irish drunk beats him up with his mates, Dim and Georgie now as policemen get their chance to beat up Alex, the ride in the police van into the country echoing the earlier joyride in the Durango 95, and then most binary of all is the way Alex returns HOME and allows Alexander to get his revenge. Kubrick shoots both scenes the same way, shots outside showing Alex approaching, then a 90º shot of Alexander at his typewriter, the camera sliding right on a track to reveal (in Part 1, Sc.1 [5]) Mrs. Alexander and (in Part 3, Sc.1 [5]) Julian, the assistant Alexander has had to hire after his wife died. Alexander says exactly the same thing (“Who on earth could that be?”) before the other person goes to the front door accompanied with the same camera set up, low and looking up. In the earlier scene Alex and his droogs push in, but in the later scene Alex falls in exhausted. Part 1, Scene 2 is book-ended with scenes (Sc.2 [1] & [7]) involving Alex’s ‘post corrective advisor’ P. R. Deltoid (Aubrey Morris) suggesting the net closing in on Alex’s freedom. In the first scene Deltoid warns Alex but in the last he spits on him, Alex having failed him in becoming a murderer. In between Alex visits the disc-bootick (Sc.2 [2]) to pick up two (naturally!) girls, a scene immediately answered by the flowing fast-motion ‘William Tell’ 3-way orgy (Sc.2 [3]). Then there is a scene with Georgie, Pete and Dim rounding on Alex (Sc.2 [4]) which is immediately answered by Alex attacking them and restoring order at the pub, the Duke of New York (Sc.2 [5]). The attack on the Cat Lady (Miriam Karlin) is again immediately answered by Alex’s arrest and police officers beating him up at the station (Sc.2 [6] & [7]). The way the droogs betray Alex answers the way he has just attacked them and is echoed again later when Dim and Georgie later take their revenge (Part 3, Sc.1 [4]).

Part 2 is structured to suggest the clockwork state working as a binary combination in itself. The oldest way of meting out justice comes from the Bible (from Exodus) and involves taking ‘an eye for an eye’. This is presented in Part 2, Scene 1 in the prison scenes where the chaplain, the prison governor (Michael Gover) and especially the Chief Guard (Michael Bates) are clockwork men representing the church, the control of law and order and the implementation of law and order. The machine-like checking in of Alex (Sc.1 [1]) is balanced by the equally machine-like checking out (Part 3, Sc.1 [1]) as the Chief Guard exercises his powers with clockwork efficiency. The chaplain’s fire and brimstone speech in (Sc.1 [2]) is balanced by the governor’s defense of ‘an eye for an eye’ (Sc.1 [6]). There are two scenes about the Ludovico treatment which Alex is looking to volunteer for and it’s given a ‘for’ speech (Sc.1 [5]) by the touring Minister of the Interior (Anthony Sharp) who is looking for a quick and easy way to cut down crime and ease prison congestion, and an ‘against’ speech (Sc.1 [6]) by the chaplain who sees psychological conditioning as both unholy and dehumanizing. Alex gets his wish and Part 2, Scene 2 sees the other half of the clockwork state represented by psychological conditioning. Again, binary presentation is all. Alex’s ceremonial entrance to the Ludovico facility (Sc.1 [1]) is balanced by his even more ceremonial stage show (Sc.1 [6]) in which his impotence is demonstrated – when confronted with the urge to be violent or attack sexually he is seized with attacks of nausea. The show has two scenes, one Alex being beaten up and then being tempted by a gorgeous siren. In between there are two scenes of Alex talking with his doctor (Sc.2 [2] & [4]) and two scenes of him watching films (Sc.2 [3] & [5]). The first is another two-hander balancing the beating up of a drunk with his own dusting up on stage at the end and also a savage rape sequence which balances his failure to touch the siren. The second film watching sequences balance World War 2 footage with Beethoven, whose Ninth Symphony Alex is accidentally conditioned against. These sequences of Alex tied to a wheelchair (again in an utterly symmetrical composition as the doctors sit at the back analyzing) are at the very apex of the film’s narrative structure, especially the words “It’s funny how the colours of the like real world only seem real when you viddy them on the screen.” During the scene we either look where Alex is looking (at the screen) or are ‘what’ he is looking at as he stares straight at us. The point that we are the same as Alex, sitting in the dark staring at a screen and being ‘conditioned’ is made clear enough even if we are not actually chained to our seats as he is.

Part 2 turns Alex into what in a sense all film watchers are – a voyeur. In Part 3, Scene 1 he has lost his ability to take part in life. What once gave him the most pleasure now gives him the most pain courtesy of the　conditioning. Part 3, Scene 1 is essentially payback time in which ‘an eye for an eye’ turns out to be the only way of punishment after all. Alex starts it (Sc.1 [1]) contemplating suicide after being rejected by his pee and em (and being given an ‘eye for an eye’ speech by Joe the lodger) and finishes it (Sc. 1 [7]) actually committing suicide by throwing himself out of a window. In between the Irish tramp, his ex-fellow droogs and Alexander all take their revenge in equal proportion to the way they were assaulted earlier. Further binary combinations present are old age v youth (the Irish tramp and friends v Alex), the police and the policed (Dim/Georgie and Alex) and the left and the right wing of the political spectrum (Alexander and his friends on the Left, the police and the Minister of the Interior on the Right). We also notice how Beethoven 9 is first used to push Alex to suicide (by the Left) and then at the end (Sc.2 [6]) it’s used to restore him back to life (by the Right). We also notice Alexander is caught in a double bind (Sc.1 [6]). He both wants to rescue Alex intending to use him as a weapon against the government and wants to destroy him for having raped his wife and made him a cripple. Forcing him to jump from the window provides a good way of seeming both to help him (the Left would claim they didn’t know about Alex being conditioned against Beethoven) and punish him – blame for the death being laid squarely on the government (the Right). Another binary connection which I will return to is the matter of names – Alex and Alexander are the same and on one level function to represent the same figure (Burgess/Kubrick – another binary!) outside the text. Part 3, Scene 2 is as carefully balanced out of binary combinations as Part 1, Scene 1. Alex returned to his primal state, it begins and ends with sex, a doctor and nurse getting it on as Alex wakes up (Sc.2 [1]) and Alex fantasizing about sex at the races in the film’s final image (Sc. 2 [6]). Newspaper headlines (Sc.2 [2]) spell out the government crisis Alex has caused and also let us know Alex De Large (‘The Great’!) was once ‘Alex Burgess.’ Alex’s pee and em visit (Sc.2 [3]) to balance acceptance with the earlier rejection (Sc.1 [1]). We also get two scenes with nurses/doctors feeding him and giving him a psychology test making sure he is back (that the id has returned!). The scene between Alex and the Interior Minister (Sc.2 [5]) is another symmetrical affair as they agree to help each other and giant speakers are whisked in equidistant either side of his bed as Alex is restored back to full potency with a closing dose of good old Ludwig van.

The dialectical narrative structure underpins the film’s equally dialectical audio-visual virtuosity. Burgess’s text is notable for its linguistic brilliance, Nadsat being a superb argot for Alex and his droogies to adopt as it refuses to date. Kubrick translates this linguistic virtuosity into an audio-visual one and so gets to the very spirit of the piece. There are perhaps three elements to this – the film’s staggering mise-en-scène, the various technical elements of the filmmaking process (the choice and execution of shots and the way they are edited together to asynchronous sound) and the astonishing use of music. Kubrick’s mise-en-scène is closely informed by Alex’s first person narration. The film reflects the world as he sees it to the extent that the places where he feels ‘in his element’ (the Korova, the underpass by the Thames, the derelict casino, Alexander’s HOME, his bedroom, the disc-bootick, the Duke of New York pub, the Cat Lady’s house and places of his fantasy imagination [the Biblical scenes, the final orgy in the snow]) are super-cool extensions of this strutting young lad’s uninhibited libido. The places where he feels ‘out of his element’ (his home, the police station, prison, the two hospitals, the viewing theater) are ‘un-cool,’ clockwork-repressive threats to his libido. This dichotomy reflects two important binaries – the split between the id and the ego and the split between artistic creative freedom and artistic creative stultification. Contrast the mise-en-scène of Alex’s bedroom with the rest of the flat that surrounds it. The bedroom is the ultimate in ‘cool’ accurately reflecting a young man’s sexual virility combined with good taste and an appreciation of artistic beauty. The walls and the bedspread match and there’s a wicked state-of-the-art stereo system. The head of Beethoven looks down from a roller-blind and his death mask decorates a wall calendar. An icon depicting 4 Christ figures sits beside a wall picture showing a naked woman, legs a-spread with Alex’s pet snake (his libido) coiled as if ready to penetrate the vaginal orifice. The rest of the flat is a monument to plastic tack with his parents’ horrendous taste made obvious – blue and pink in the living room, orange, yellow and silver shining checkers in the kitchen, pink walls looking down on a green bedspread in the bedroom. His parents’ clothes are a nightmare of ill-fitting colours and designs to reflect the way this teenager in revolt sees them. The Cat Lady’s room is another example of filtering what we see through Alex’s mind. A misogynist’s ‘pussy-heaven’, we are shown cats everywhere and large pictures of naked women displaying their breasts and vaginas. The Cat Lady herself is first shown as one of these ‘artifacts’ as she lies in a leotard on the floor, backside up and legs over her shoulders with her ‘pussy’ facing the camera. When Alex enters we notice there are just two masculine items in the room, a bust of Beethoven and a huge Hans Arp-like sculpture of an erect penis. Together these symbolize Alex in toto and as the two face each other it is as a kind of masturbatory dance of orgasmic delight which climaxes with the penis being smashed into the Cat Lady’s face as she ‘meows’ in the form of oral copulation. This scene of Alex ‘at home’ is followed immediately by a scene where he is out in the cold in the police station faced by mechanical officers performing their clockwork tasks in a cold, featureless, sexless room – the corrective to the libidinal release of the previous scene.

The acting is closely informed by the mise-en-scène, Kubrick turning locations in Part 1 which reflected Alex’s libidinal rush into places in Part 3 which repress him with clockwork figures. The underpass turns from a stage for glorious violence (Part 1, Sc.1 [2]) into an arena for revenge (Part 3, Sc.1 [2]) as the tramp is attacked and then attacks back, and HOME turns from a stage for sexual abandon (Part 1, Sc.1 [5]) into a treacherous torture chamber (Part 3, Sc.1 [5]) as Alex first rapes and then is forced into suicide. Authority figures in Kubrick films are almost always sinister and there is no shortage of them here from smarmy Deltoid and sadistic policemen through dictatorial prison officials (Michael Bates giving an especially clockwork [and hilarious!] performance as the Chief Guard) to inhuman doctors (especially Carl Duering’s terrifying Dr. Brodsky delighting in Alex’s discomfort) and devious politicians on both sides of the political spectrum. Striding through the film capturing the journey from erotic abandon through repression and back again is Malcolm McDowell giving the performance of his life.

Closely informing the Kubrick’s creative choices is the central dialectic between artistic creative freedom and stultification. In Part 3, Chapter 5 of his book Burgess makes explicit the link between Mr. Alexander and Alex (“F. Alexander. Good Bog. I thought, he is another Alex”) and also the link between Alexander and himself for his character is the writer of the book ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Kubrick clearly identifies with Burgess as Alexander is linked with Alex. This means that the film may be a first person narrative told through the eyes of Alex, but he also stands for the director himself making for the film a meditation on artistic freedom stultified by the clockwork society which disallows the display of the id’s hidden impulses. Observe how the visual style of Part 1 clashes with that of Parts 2 and 3. In Part 1 Kubrick forefronts the artifice of filmmaking by throwing the entire toolbox of his trade into his depiction of the performing artist (himself!) in full libidinal release. The slow reverse dolly of the opening Korova sequence segues into the backlit attack on the tramp, the breathless editing of the casino fight, the use of ultra-wide angle lenses to distort perspectives, extreme close-ups for the attack on Alexander, quick-fire explosive editing for the montage showing Alex’s masturbatory fantasies, the tour-de-force 360º reverse track around the disc bootick, fast-motion for the William Tell orgy, slow motion for Alex’s attack on his droogs and hand-held sequences for the attacks on Mrs. Alexander and the Cat Lady. As Alex is turned into a clockwork orange by the mechanical state, the visual treatment becomes cold and static to represent the neutering of a creative artist. He is neutered most of all by being brainwashed propaganda-style to make him conform. The viewing theater sequence is at the center of the film no doubt because Kubrick wanted to forefront the fear of his artistic freedom being taken away. Part 3 is also static because the artist is bed-bound, but there is tremendous energy in a track in the hospital room when the doctor comes to give him his psychological test and there is great movement in the closing scene.

Kubrick makes multiple references to his own past films to further stamp his identity as Alex’s creative artist doppelgänger. In a sense the film starts where 2001 left off with a character eyeballing the screen looking directly out at us, the Star-Child having grown up to become Alex. The attack on the tramp is backlit noir-style to recall the attack on Davy Gordon in Killer’s Kiss and the final shot of The Killing as the three men advance on Johnny Clay. The mannequins in the derelict casino remind us of the mannequin factory fight in Killer’s Kiss and the way two droog gangs face off replays the two gangs of apes fighting over the waterhole at the start of 2001. The Durango 95 joy-ride is another Star-Gate sequence as the camera fixed on the side of the car whizzes through the night and the interior of HOME with futuristic red furniture on white walls remind us of Hilton Space Station 5 in the same film. The clown masks look back to the mask worn by Johnny Clay during the robbery in The Killing and the way Alex tells Alexander to “Viddy well little brother” equals Quilty asking Humbert “Do you like to watch captain?” in Lolita. Alex’s masturbatory fantasies include a Dr. Strangelove-like nuclear blast and the way Alex commands the space striding through the disc-bootick reminds us of Dax commanding his trench in Paths of Glory and Poole running around the centrifugal body of Discovery in 2001. The fight with the Cat Lady replays the fight in Killer’s Kiss replacing the pike and axe with the Beethoven bust and a giant phallus. If Alex and his droogs resemble 2001 apes rampaging over the detritus of the modern world and scrambling for bones to nourish themselves, Dim delivers the ultimate answer to Moon-Watcher’s bone by smashing Alex in the face with a bone-white bottle of milk. Dr. Strangelove reappears in two forms later on – Alex tied to his wheelchair in the viewing theater (the doctors at the back resembling the sinister figures sitting around the table in the War Room) and Alexander a cripple in a wheelchair. Among the plethora of Kubrickiana is the ritual final eating sequence where the Minister of the Interior feeds Alex. This looks back to the generals’ post-execution breakfast in Paths of Glory and Bowman’s meal at the end of 2001.

Lastly, charging everything with an even higher voltage is the extraordinary deployment of music which we notice not only heightens the emotions required for each scene (especially obvious in Part 1 where Alex’s libidinal rush is given the flavor of a dance), but is applied in binary form. The march from Purcell’s Queen Mary’s Funeral Music appears twice in Part 1, Sc.1, once in the major key [1], and once in the minor key [6-7]. This is balanced exactly in Part 3 where again it appears twice and again in the major (Sc.1 [3-4]) and then in the minor (Sc.2 [2]). Part 1 is dominated by Rossini’s overture ‘The Thieving Magpie’ which appears twice (Sc.1 [3-4] and Sc.2 [5-6]). Different parts of Beethoven’s Ninth appear twice, the scherzo second movement in Part 1, Sc.1 [7] and in Part 3, Sc.1 [7]); the Turkish March section from the 4th movement in Part 1, Sc.2 [2] and in Part 2, Sc.2 [5]; and the choral finale in Part 1, Sc.1 [6] and in Part 3, Sc.2 [6]. Rossini’s William Tell overture appears once in each part, the famous fast section for the Part 1 orgy (Sc.2 [3]) and the opening slow section in Part 2 [1] and Part 3 [1]. Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance Marches appear twice, No.1 in Part 2, Sc.1 [5] and No.4 in Part 2, Sc.2 [1]. Even ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ gets binary presentation, once as Alex attacks the Alexanders (Part 1, Sc1 [5]) and then when he returns to the same place and sings in the bath (Part 3, Sc.1 [5]). Kubrick presents the music either naturally or played on a Moog synthesizer (brilliantly realized by Walter Carlos) so as to give a futuristic, satiric slightly off-kilter impression to match the playful use of extreme cinematic forms.

There is one word for all this – dazzling. Dazzling for the senses and dazzling for the brain. This is a film which compels you to return again and again to appreciate Kubrick’s satire, his savage wit, the fundamental mastery of his cinematic vision and his knowing grasp of what lies at the base of the human condition. The film remains disturbing because it remains deeply relevant. Unlike most dystopian visions, this is one that refuses to date. Highly recommended.

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Joshua Miller

A Timeless Work of Art

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 17, 2004

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A Clockwork Orange is one of three films, along with Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey, generally regarded as Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece and is probably my personal favorite of the three. Adapted from Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel of the same name, A Clockwork Orange is a violent, controversial film with some of the most iconic images in cinematic history and is easily the most accessible of those three Kubrick films. The film satirizes society, politics, and is also (like many Kubrick films) deeply philosophical. In addition, it's also one of the most surreal and endlessly fascinating films ever made.

The film opens iconically with a close-up of the anti-hero protagonist and narrator Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and slowly pulls back to reveal his three droogs (Pete, Georgie, and Dim) sitting in the Korova Milk Bar where they are enjoying "milk plus" before embarking on a night fraught with "ultra-violence." Alex and his droogs wreak havoc in thoroughly immoral ways, beginning with the beating of an elderly vagrant and concluding with a home-invasion and rape, the latter performed while Alex joyfully sings "Singin' in the Rain." When he's not terrorizing the countryside by night, Alex is shown religiously listening to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and inviting some girls back to his house to participate in a bit of the old "in-out, in-out." After Alex is betrayed by his droogs and sentenced to a 14-year stay in prison, he is given the chance to participate in a new experiment that will see his sentence commuted by brainwashing him into being unable to commit such atrocities.

In addition to being a novelist, Burgess was also a linguist and the characters in A Clockwork Orange speak in Nadsat, slang comprised of Russian, English, and Cockney rhyming slang. For the adaptation, this remained intact and is one of the film's most indelible aspects. It's one of the reasons that the film is so memorable and timeless, as well as a contributor to what makes it so original. The brilliance of the story comes from Burgess, but the brilliance of the film is all Kubrick. A Clockwork Orange does not simply function on the foundation of having a brilliant story, but on the way that story is conveyed. This is one of the best assembled films ever made with one amazing scene consistently following another.

The term "film composition" is never more appropriate than when discussing the works of Stanley Kubrick, as he treated each film like a musical composition with each piece falling perfectly into place at the precise moment. The composition of this film is masterful, perfect and it maintains an atmosphere so unlike any other film. Speaking of musical composition, it's impossible to separate this film and its spellbinding effect from the music of Ludwig van Beethoven that makes up a large part of the film's score. It may be a bold statement, but those looking for a perfect film need look no further. There is never a dull moment in A Clockwork Orange and this is not simply because of a compelling story, but because of the spell the film casts with performances that are like choreographed dance and the production design/art direction (by John Barry, Russell Hagg, and Peter Sheilds) that is truly a thing of beauty. There is not a single film in all of history that looks like this one and it's one of the best looking films you'll ever see.

The whole cast give pitch-perfect performances and, typical once again of Kubrick films, several minor supporting roles are populated with actors who stand out substantially due to their little quirks. McDowell gives the performance of a lifetime as Alex, the role that made him an icon in addition to leaving him forever typecast. Shades of the character are noticeable in McDowell's earlier performance in If..., the film that inspired Kubrick to cast him, but it's a fully-realized, simultaneously comical and menacing performance here and it's doubtful that anyone could have pulled it off as marvelously as McDowell. He appears in every scene and carries the entire film on his shoulders with his mannerisms, voice, and movement, all of which are partly responsible for keeping the audience glued to the screen. In minor roles, the most unforgettable are arguably Patrick Magee (as F. Alexander, the writer whose home is invaded early on) and Aubrey Morris (as probation officer P.R. Deltoid). Deltoid's high-strung, comically nervous way of adding "mmm...yes" to the end of every sentence and Magee's creepy and unforgettable transformation from a quiet writer to a madman make these performances stand out even with very little screen time.

I'm not the first person to say it nor will I be the last, but A Clockwork Orange is a work of art and stands as one of the best films ever made. Nothing in Kubrick's oeuvre remotely resembles it and yet it's so thoroughly Kubrick's work; a film that casts a spell on you with its biting originality and carries you through a cinematic world so uniquely its own. Kubrick began as a photographer and that profession largely contributes to why so many iconic, unforgettable images spawn from his films. Kubrick, possibly more so than any other director, knew how to point a camera at a particular image and get the most effective shot from it. Nearly every frame of this film is perfect from a photographic standpoint and easily has the best opening and closing shots of any film I can readily recall.

It's a film that, with its political, societal, and moral implications, makes you think. It's a film that continues to cast a spell after repeated viewings; a film that still manages to entertain, shock, and excite. It remains, as it did at the time of its release, a controversial, subversive, and brilliant film that even the casual filmgoer cannot help but be drawn to. 40 years after it was made and there are still not enough adjectives to accurately convey how blisteringly original, brave, and immersive it is. With this recent Blu-Ray release, you're able to experience the film all over again and it's never looked or sounded better. Like nearly all of his films, this one had the Kubrick touch and, as such, it's pure cinematic gold.

GRADE: A

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g3cd

Wow, war der schlecht.

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on December 13, 2020

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Ich habe den Film hier gekauft, weil er mir von Amazon empfohlen wurde und sich die Bewertungen überschlagen haben mit Lob. Aber tatsächlich waren die Dialoge, die Schauspieler und die Story so schlecht, dass ich mehrfach an Monty Python denken musste. Völlig gestelzte Sprache (so in der Art von "hello hello hello old chump, isn't this a splendid parrot? Yes indeed, sir, a magnificent parrot, if I may say so!"). Ich hatte zu keiner Zeit irgendetwas für oder gegen den Hauptcharakter in dem Film gefühlt, der Film berührte mich in keinster Weise. Gataca ist bedrückender, was die Zukunftsvision angeht, ExDrummer gewaltverherrlichender, Enter the Void stärker sexualisiert und selbst bei Brazil fühle ich stärker mit dem Protagonisten mit. Das Hauptproblem ist aber, das der Film sich selber so wahnsinnig ernst nimmt als Gesellschaftskritik. Dabei ist er nur wie ein Stück Kunst aus den späten 60ern, das von einem Schülertheater wieder entdeckt wurde. Toll für die Eltern und diejenigen, die in den 60ern dabei waren und in Erinnerungen schwelgen, ansonsten aber leider definitiv kein Kult und absolut nicht sehenswert. Sondern langweilig und peinlich.

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Lee Bryant.

40 year Anniversary Edition blue ray

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 27, 2015

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Brilliant from start to finnish, my favourite kubrick film, it's just a shame ,but typical, that this is not available in the uk. The film is available in other formats, but this 40 year anniversary edition is not. You will need a multi region blue ray player to view this, and most likely need to import from the usa, but if you meet the above criteria this is the version you need, and want, its fantastic! .

7 people found this helpful

Hugh Brown

A Clockwork Orange 2-Disc Special Edition

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 10, 2013

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Stanley Kubrick was already a superstar after the release of his other clasics like 'Dr. Strangelove' and '2001: A Space Odyssey' but 'A Clockwork Orange' would go down in history as his most famous film and that's for one reason and one reason only, When it was released, It's portrayal of Gang violence influenced others to do the same. At some point there was an attack on a dutch girl in which the attackers chanted 'Singin' in the Rain'. Kubrick's image was severely damaged and he wihdrew the film from british audiences. It was not seen in britain until the 4th of july 2001. And it had a different impact on the new generation that watched it.... It was finally concidered a masterpiece. Which it is. This edition of the film is fit for any Kubrick fan. But there are only afew special features, one of them an outstanding documentary on the making and aftermath of the release of the film. It was only after he died did Kubricks films get the recodnition they deserved. 'A Clockwork Orange' never fails to amuse, terrify and influence many that love the magic of Stanley Kubrick.

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Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Ultraviolence is a political music!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 13, 2001

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This film is banned or at least has been banned for many years in Great Britain because it cuts deep into the political fabric of British society. It shows what ultraviolence is for some young teenagers in England : an entertainment in a society where being entertained is necessarily realizing deep and not so unconscious impulses and drives. These young people all seem to carry some Shakespearian Richard III in them. But the main, object of the film is to show how the political system of the country uses this violence and these violent teenagers to promote their power, to win their elections, to impose their visions and manipulate public opinion. It is true that they can easily use the family structure that is both permissive and cold, and even rejects the young. They can easily use the social services that are supposed to help and protect young people but who are a nest of perverts and ambitious mediocre social-climbers who prefer playing with their fantasms to solving the problems they are supposed to solve. They can count on the prison system who has only one objective : to humiliate the prisoners and to live in a dream of domination and power over helpless inmates. They can also count on the press and the media that do not look for truth, or do not assume their mind-building duty or mission, but only look for sensational news to sell as many copies as possible, to attract as many viewers as possible. So politicians can easily manipulate this press and these media and hence public opinion, provided the news they provide them with are pungent and hefty enough to shock benevolence and indifference. This film is a caustic satire of modern English society. But furthermore, it is the most beautiful and powerful musical film since the whole film is entirely accompanied by classical music showing how strongly this classical music speaks to young people, and to us, and how it conveys and means so many violent feelings and frustrations in them. We may think Ludwig van Beethoven is a little old-fashioned in that line. But yet it gets such a marvellous new life in the film by the association of the last movement of the ninth symphony with every moment of the film, giving to that music at least ten or a dozen different meanings. Classical music is first of all and before all a music that can take any meaning we want provided we invest it into the situation that will bring this meaning into the picture. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.

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Mr. X

Great film.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 23, 2013

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While I do not condone violence any any form, this film is great. Alex, the lead character, is the leader of a gang he calls his droogs. The film follows Alex with his criminal gang as they hold no respect for innocent people, the law and anyone who would get in their way. The rape scene is very bad in my opinion but if you can put that aside and focus on the rest of the film, then it is enjoyable to watch.

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