A Clockwork Orange
by Stanley Kubrick
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DVD details
Actor: Adrienne Corri, Malcolm McDowell, Michael Bates, Patrick Magee, Warren ClarkeDirector: Stanley Kubrick
Cinematographer: John Alcott
Producer: Stanley Kubrick
Writer: Stanley Kubrick
Producer: Bernard Williams
Producer: Max L. Raab
Producer: Si Litvinoff
Writer: Anthony Burgess
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 136 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-06-29
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of A Clockwork Orange
DVD Review: A chilling and disturbing midnight movie
Summary: 4 Stars
[CAUTION: SCATTERED PLOT SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THIS ENTIRE ESSAY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED:) I first saw Stanley Kubrick's brilliant, but disturbing A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) in late 1971 at the Hollywood Pacific Theater in downtown Hollywood. I was an optimistic college student about to turn 21. The movie overwhelmed and elated me. I thought it was the greatest movie I had ever seen. And the "X" rating gave it a forbidden fruit bonus that made several young women from my dorm asking me if I would take them to it because I was just a friend and they did not want to see it with their boyfriends. During 1972, CLOCKWORK was THE movie for adult moviegoers to see; it played at the Hollywood Pacific for months on end. I was literally seeing it every month and finding something new and fresh with each viewing. I was the same age as punk protagonist Alex (Malcolm McDowell in the performance he has never topped) and found something imaginative about the use of music constantly, the set design, the editing, and the circular and ironic film structure. It somehow did not bother me that I was watching hoodlums beating up and sometimes accidentally killing innocent people after drinking hallucinogenic milk; I just loved the interior of the Korova Milkbar and the writer and his wife being raped to "Singin' in the Rain". And with Gene Kelly's rendition of "Singin' in the Rain" over the colorful closing credits, I left the theater feeling elated after 137 minutes. And it wasn't just me. Reviews were mostly raves for Christmas Week 1971. The movie won Best Picture and Director of the Year awards from the New York Film Critics. And it got four Oscar nominations, including Picture and Director. One of my film professors at UCLA even offered extra credit to anyone who saw CLOCKWORK in Hollywood and turned in a halfway-intelligent review; I got an A.
But we all grow up. The very same print of CLOCKWORK ORANGE-OK, a few frames of nudity were trimmed in two places to get a ludicrous "R" rating-that enthralled me as a college student of 21 now terrifies me as a middle-aged movie scholar of 54. The copy of the movie I own on VHS tape has only been played three times in the last decade, including once before writing this essay. The film's near future of 1986 is now the past. It is admittedly fun to see the kitchen with four colors of wallpaper, Mom with a purple wig and red raincoat, the glass tables with metal bases, and a record shop that still sells videocassettes and LP records. The high-speed sex scene with two girls and "The William Tell Overture" remains a delight for me.
But Alex's crimes are horrendous to me now. I do not enjoy them, even with the creative use of music to distance us. When the State imprisons Alex and puts him through the Ludovico mind-altering technique in the movie's middle section, I now root for the State to win, not Alex. I have been a patient myself in my share of hospitals, including for two heart attacks. The doctors and nurses seem sympathetic. And the ironic twist finale troubles me now at age 54. It leaves me with a queasy feeling, not euphoric. Same piece of celluloid for 137 minutes, but three decades later in emotional growth. And then there is Malcolm McDowell doing two different short-lived, but welcome TV series with white hair and smiles to reassure us that he is not Alex anymore. It was only a role, albeit the role of his career.
(CAUTION: NON-STOP PLOT SPOILERS! BEWARE!} For those who have never experienced CLOCKWORK ORANGE in a theater or on home video, let me brace you for what to expect. Ghostly music plays on the soundtrack as we track back from Alex and his two pals (droogs) drinking milk laced with hallucinogenic drugs in a milkbar with reclining white nude women sculptures as far as the eye can see; customers gets a refill by pressing a button below each sculpture's purple private parts. Then a gang rape follows the beating up of a tramp under a night bridge. A glass house where a writer and his wife live is then invaded by the three hoodlums. Alex kicks at the writer as he happily sings "Singin' in the Rain" and rapes the wife after knocking over bookshelves. Then the gang goes home. Alex lives in downtown slum apartments with obscene graffiti on broken elevators. Climbing the stairs he places a pet snake named Basil on his bed and plays Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, his favorite, happily on audiocassette. A visit from his probation officer in the morning is followed by a fight and accidental murder by Alex with a woman who has a lot of cats and a lot of hilariously obscene sculptures, such as a white penis and testicles; that is a murder weapon. But Alex is arrested outside the house, tricked by his two droogie friends. And we are now 45 minutes into a 137 minute movie that falls into three neat parts. I give out this much plot because of friends who have given up on the movie after 20 minutes of non-stop violence and sex scenes with pubic hair. Walk out on this movie before it ends, and you will miss the whole troubling and ironic point of it.
(MORE DETAILED PLOT SPOILERS:) The second third of CLOCKWORK ORANGE mostly leaves behind sex and violence. Arrested for the accidental murder of the catwoman, Alex is now a prisoner of the State. Scenes throughout are hospital corridors and rooms with sympathetic staff for me. This is not a traditional prison at all. And Alex is very sympathetic as he reads the Bible (though he likes the sex and violence parts) and trying to be a model prisoner. After a couple of years, he volunteers as a guinea pig for something new the State has up its sleeve-the Lodovico Technique, brainwashing to abhor all sex and violence. We see a few of these sessions-Alex with his eyes propped open being forced to watch a brutal rape film (this got very slightly trimmed to get the "R" rating in America) and I think a scene from TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (1934). But an Alex supposedly all cured of sex and violence does not really succeed before an auditorium gathering. Will the program backfire?
(STILL SOME MORE PLOT SPOILERS:) We are now about 90 minutes into the movie, with roughly 45 minutes left to go. This is where the movie gets mind-bogglingly and dazzlingly ironic. The program has rough side-effects for Alex, who becomes an abused victim by some of his former tormentors. Look what has happened
to Alex's two buddies and what they do to him. The writer shows up again in a stunningly ironic scene with an even more imaginative and ironic payoff, leading us to a controversial final fifteen minutes or so. I still think it is a happy ending, maybe because it has five minutes of closing credits with colored card name backgrounds and Gene Kelly doing "Singin' in the Rain"on the soundtrack,
Two things are for sure: The fearless Malcolm McDowell should have won the Oscar he was not even nominated for, and CLOCKWORK ORANGE is a masterpiece of audacious and endlessly creative filmmaking by one of our greatest filmmakers. This is Stanley Kubrick's greatest film for me in terms of writing and pure filmmaking and provocative ideas, even as it still terrifies me. I try to watch it on VHS tape in a darkened night bedroom to evoke the grand single-screen Hollywood Pacific Theater in 1972 when I was only 21, but it is hard. We are all older now-and hopefully wiser. If you think you are up to it, CLOCKWORK ORANGE is a staggering and overwhelming video rental evening-and sells on DVD for only $14.95.
[...]
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