Article by Steve Biodrowski

Producer-director Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel is a strangely overwhelming experience--at time contemptible, and yet always valid in its sardonic outlook. We`re forced to identify with a young, violent droog, Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) as he rapes, brutalizes, and murders; after an experimental treatment conditions him to become violently ill at the mere thought of sex or violence, his kharma is leveled as, one by one, those he wronged have their chance at revenge. The sick joke of the movie is that everyone else, indeed the very state itself, is as morally corrupt as our `friend and humble narrator.` Burgess`s point was that destroying someone`s free will, his ability to make moral choices, was as immoral as anything Alex did; in the novel (at least in England, where its last chapter was not shorn off), Alex eventually outgrows his youthful penchant for violence and finds himself aware of a desire to settle down. For Kubrick, life moves in cycles, endlessly repeating; thus the film ends with Alex returned to his previous state, presumably ready to embark on another spree as soon as he`s released from hospital (`I was cured all right`). A cynical film, without redeeming characters, and yet it makes its point..

This X-rated item came out during that brief period when Hollywood was not afraid of releasing a movie for an adults-only audience. Shortly thereafter, controversy in Great Britain caused Kubrick to withdraw the film from re-release, and the prints in America were slightly re-edited to garner an R-rating. Fortunately, the original cut was reinstated in 1995 for a midnight movie re-release in the States (this is the version now on the DVD), and the film finally was allowed to officially screen in England again in the year 2000 (there had been underground screenings from time to time).

CLOCKWORK ORANGE has maintained a perennial popularity on the revival house circuit, even in these days of home video, laserdiscs, and DVD. Something about the exploits of the amoral anti-hero have a continuing appeal, perhaps most strongly to teenage boys when they first reach the age when they can see the film. The “ultra-violence” of the first half hour is enough to galvanize those adolescent hormones to frightening levels

Based on the novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess, the story follows Alex as he inflicts violence on helpless victims with the help of his gang (known as “droogs”), then finds himself arrested and subjected to a form of psychological violence that (the film suggests) is at least as reprehensible as anything he himself committed. One of the film’s ghastliest moments comes not from violence but from Alex’s realization that the technique used to curb his violent impulses is also conditioning him to become ill when he hears his favorite music, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. His tortured howl (“It’s a sin!”) is one of the film’s most moving moments, a clear condemnation that the government’s doctors have no right to be doing what they’re doing, no matter what crimes Alex has committed.

This sociological argument (that the government is wrong to use conditioning techniques to deprive a convicted criminal of free will, even if that will was used mostly to commit violence) has led some critics to argue that the film endorses Alex’s behavior (in much the same way that later critics accuse SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and HANNIBAL of glorifying Hannibal Lecter). Kubrick himself once corrected this misperception (back in the old days, when he gave interviews) by pointing out that old Hollywood Westerns used to portray a lynching as evil because an innocent character would be wrongly hanged. In Kubrick’s view, a lynching was immoral even if the character was guilty, and in CLOCKWOR ORANGE he set out to make a similar point, with a character who could not be considered an innocent victim.

Seen today, the film’s X-rated violence pales somewhat when compared to the carnage on view in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but the satirical sting remains intact, and the film holds up well. In fact, rather than looking dated, this dark vision of the future now seems far too contemporary, as if taking place in some skewed parallel universe where typewriters and vinyl records still proliferate. The black humor may occasionally seem condescending, but McDowell’s subversive performance, slyly engaging our sympathies against all our better judgment, holds the whole saga together.

READ THE COMPLETE RETROSPECTIVE, INCLUDING COMMENTS FROM MALCOLM MCDOWELL, AT CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE