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| Directed by Stanley Kubrick / Starring Malcolm McDowell / Polaris Productions, Warner Bros. Pictures / 1971 / 1:1.66 | |||||||
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I do not know what prompted the 45-year old English writer Anthony Burgess to write his 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange. At that age in life, anything that has to do with the crazy things "young people" are doing, makes a person scratch their head in wonder. If there was ever a movie to make the older people in an audience scratch their heads in wonder, it was Stanley Kubrick’s filmization of Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. Released in the United States at the end of 1971, the film occasioned tremendous controversy. Even the unprecedented events depicted in the years’ earlier films such as Carnal Knowledge, The French Connection and The Last Picture Show couldn’t even begin to prepare audiences for what A Clockwork Orange had in store for them. With this film, Kubrick was beginning to establish a working method that became the envy of (and model for) every director in the biz. Find an obscure novel no one had ever heard of, hire unknown, or not well-known, actors, keep the budget reasonable, demand absolute secrecy from everyone involved with the shooting and the marketing, tell the studio they can see it when it is finished, and then, when it’s all ready, unleash it on the public. Clockwork swept the major critics off of their collective feet. The New York Film Critics Association voted Kubrick Best Director, and A Clockwork Orange as Best Picture for 1971. Warner Bros. was able to use these recommendations from the critics to say to the public, "This is a major film from a major director. Yeah, we know it’s got an "X" rating, but so did Midnight Cowboy, right?" But Clockwork is not Midnight Cowboy. Warner Bros. booked Clockwork into a small string of theatres in the major markets where they settled in for a long playoff. In Los Angeles, it played at the 1,250-seat Hollywood Pacific Theatre five times a day to standing room only crowds who arrived to see what the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey had cooked up this time. It played there for 37 weeks!
And what Kubrick had cooked up was quite simply like no film that had ever been seen before. A film whose very essence – its tone – was so different that it wipes the viewer out. A film whose story of an incredibly awful, stylish thug and his gang asked you to come along with Alex and his droogs and share in the fun! At the same time, you never loose sight of the facts of the case: Alex is as self-centered as an ego gets, and something ought to be done about him. "Troubled teen" doesn’t quite cover it. Of course the "troubled teen" had been a staple of Hollywood movies ever since James Dean had his Socratic dialogues with Jim Backus in Rebel Without a Cause. But in the older films, the young hero was always at least trying to figure out why the "grown-ups" had made the world such an icky place. There was always some sort of reassuring "now that we’ve gotten it out of our system, let’s work together to sort things out" tone at the fade-out. Not here. Kubrick’s long rambling film is one uncertainty following another, where your sympathies are whipsawing from one group to another and back again. Kubrick’s brilliant film allows room for both sides of the issue, but what is different here is that the "adults" are complete non-entities; they are out-and-out ridiculous, in an all too-human way. The contempt Alex has for them in the opening section of the film is mirrored in every way: the idiotic clothes they wear, the music they listen to ("I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper"!), the furniture they have in their cramped apartments, the way they talk (" . . . hence not at school – Yeess?") The viewpoint of the film is constantly shifting. Much of it is subjective, from Alex’s point of view (he is, after all, narrating the story). But there are spots where the narrative shifts to something else, usually Kubrick’s editorializing on events in a way that no other director had ever done before. Because of this multiplicity of tones and viewpoints, it is not surprising that many people love the film simply because of the sensations it contains. A cinema of sensation. It is no wonder that Warner Bros.’ trailer for the film was a utilization of kinostasis (a huge number of shots flashing by at a very rapid rate). Short shots from the film alternated with titles which said things like, "SATIRICAL" or "VIOLENT" or "SARDONIC" or "BEETHOVEN," while Wendy Carlos’ electronic version of the Overture to William Tell boomed along. Some of the guys at the trailer house must have dropped acid or something when they came up with that one! After all the rape and theft and beatings and milk bottle smashing in the first 40 minutes of the picture, you take a strange pleasure in watching Alex indoctrinated into the Staga, or prison. Why else would Kubrick insist that we watch Alex strip down to his underwear after emptying his pockets? It must be the fact that like any good scene, it is action that reveals character. Alex has been shown to be vicious, cruel, and utterly heartless. Does that fool of a prison guard really think that he’s teaching Alex anything by telling him to, "pick that up, and put it down properly!"? The petty indignities of prison life are not going to wipe that grin off of Alex’s face, no sir! I am the unusual Clockwork fan who finds the second and third acts of the film more interesting than the first. When you look at all the Clockwork fetishizing that goes on around the world today, images from only the first act of the film are appropriated. I have seen plenty of t-shirts with pictures of Malcolm McDowell’s Alex in his "horrorshow" outfit. I have never seen anyone selling bootleg pictures of Alex gasping for breath at the water trough after being beaten by the police. Most of the stills and images released by the studio (heck, even the ones on this very web page) are all from the first act. They know what side the bread is buttered! But this is a strange case of the storyteller going to unusual lengths to get the audience on his "side" in act one of the piece, in order to show them how impossible it all is in act two and three. But I think that Clockwork’s first act, the depiction of Alex and his friends, the things they do and the dumb-assed society they operate in, is that it looks like the world we already live in. In the late 60s and early 70s, Great Britain had become the very epicenter of a style of architecture called by some as "brutalism." These huge cement apartment block and office buildings are the very buildings Kubrick used in this picture. The Ludovico Center itself is one of the most crystalline examples of "brutalism." Imagine that. "Brutal" architecture! What kind of people can result from "brutal" buildings? When Alex walks up to the elevator at the Municipal Flatblock Linear North, and gives the busted hollow metal door a nonchalant kick with his boot, we all thought that was a riot back in ’72, because the elevators in the dorms at U.C.L.A. worked exactly the same way! Kubrick wants us to laugh at these absurdities. Make no mistake. His viewpoint says, "I know this kid is a noble savage, but look at the environment he lives in – it’s criminally insane." It’s this kind of commentary that aligns Kubrick squarely with future generations and their needs. And in doing so, Kubrick assumes the act of commenting on things that he feels are disgraceful, which is the highest calling in art. Not to merely entertain, but to get you to consider the direction things are going in this world. This is what makes A Clockwork Orange great – in my opinion. The first thing that greets you in this film is the electronic music. Where would this film be without Wendy Carlos’ electronic textures? Kubrick had embraced the habit of utilizing bits of classical music to form the background scores of his films beginning with 2001, and he would continue this approach for the rest of his career. Kubrick was one of the many admirers’ of Carlos’ multi-platinum album, Switched-on Bach. Oddly enough, Carlos had been given a copy of the Clockwork novel and was working on a piece that unconsciously mirrored its moods called Timesteps. Carlos was also one of the first people to be working with a vocorder, which turned singing into electronic sounds. A section of Beethoven’s "Ode to Joy" from the Ninth Symphony was in the works. Carlos read that Kubrick was making a film of Clockwork. Carlos sent him tapes of the Beethoven and Timesteps after Kubrick had already finished shooting (!), and the rest is history. Carlos’ music captured the paradox inherent in Alex’s aristocratic love of classical music and preference for cataclysmic violence. Burgess understood that in order to be a brutal thug, one had to have a warped sense of values. Alex and his droogs have their first falling out in the Karova Milkbar when one of them, Dim, razzes a woman for singing some of the "Ode to Joy." That Alex could be so protective of something that is old and outmoded, is a puzzle to them. The droogs don’t understand it. The theme of the discarding of the old by the young is dramatized in the first demonstration of Alex’s wanton violence. An old drunken man, (Paul Farrell), is mercilessly assaulted because he is "old." From that, we cut to an ornamental painting on the ceiling of the "derelict casino" which is strewn with garbage. The old building is the setting a rival gang finds suitable for the gang raping of a "weepy young devochka." This is all choreographed to a section of the Overture to Rossini’s opera The Thieving Magpie, which is perhaps the epitome of elegance in music. This juxtaposition of old and new continues as Alex and the droogs steal a hot sports car and go joyriding. They run off the road nothing but "old" cars: Volkswagens and lorries. When the car pulls up at the "HOME" of the writer, in the background, there is a pasture with a horse wandering about. When we see Frank the writer (Patrick Magee), from the perspective of today, we see him as old and outmoded indeed. He is writing with an IBM Selectric and is using carbon paper! Alex and his buddies con their way in, tie Frank up and proceed to strip his wife (Adrienne Corri) in order to rape her. Looking at this scene today, it occurs to me that Kubrick did what any director would want to do. It’s a very tense scene, and he puts you right in the middle of it. Of course Alex is going to be happy and callous while kicking all the stuff off of Frank’s desk. But Kubrick’s focus is on what Frank sees. The close-ups in the scene are reserved for reaction shots of Frank and his wife. When Alex returns home, as I mentioned, the flatblock is a perfect dungheap. How could the "adults" let things get to this pass? It doesn’t matter in the slightest to Alex, who has fashioned an adolescent fantasy world to escape to in his room: the drawer full of stolen watches and money, the huge stereo, the snake, the erotic art. It is all white. Many of the things in this film that could be paths to redemption are white. Alex’s room, much of the prison, the white light pouring out of the windows of "HOME" later in the film, the window Alex jumps out of, the snowy background of the last shot. All white. There is an immediate cut to the hallway of the apartment. It’s all covered in metallic colored wallpaper. Alex’s mother (Sheila Raynor) who is merely reduced to an initial in Alex’s "nadsat" language – "Em" for "mother", approaches the door to Alex’s room wearing a purple wig. Both she and Alex’s father (Philip Stone) are depicted as simpletons. Even though "Pe" wonders where his son goes to every evening, they foolishly accept Alex’s cover story. Who doesn’t think of their parents this way at times? Alex has a combination lock on the door to his room. What kid wouldn’t want one of those?
So the larger question of just what it is with this Alex guy is addressed in the next scene with his probation officer Mr. Deltiod (Aubrey Morris). "Is there some devil inside you?" Morris’ performance is so strange and misshapen, you can’t help but think of the homoerotic implications as Deltoid proceeds to force Alex to lay on the bed with him during a stern lecture which "climaxes" with Deltiod hitting Alex in the testicles. The young vs. old theme is used again in the scene where the droogs Georgie (James Marcus), Dim (Warren Clarke) and Pete (Michael Tarn) lie in wait in order to confront Alex. Dim is a complete case of infantile paralysis. He is seated on a crushed baby carriage and is using one of the tires as a steering wheel. He is making noises simulating a car engine, his arm pretends to be using a shifter. When the droogs propose that Alex shouldn’t pick on Dim, the scene is fascinating in the way the droogs speak to one another. There is a courtliness to the way they structure their sentences ("I was not awakened when I left orders for awakening.") that goes far beyond the way the adults in the picture speak. Georgie wants to rob a rich lady’s house. He puts it to Alex in young vs. old terms: "Tonight, we pull a man-sized crast [robbery]." But Alex doesn’t want to grow up any more than he wants to follow the orders of anyone. He shows that he is still the leader of the pack by knifing Dim and beating on Georgie. In the interest of maintaining his position as leader, Alex wants to know about the "man-sized crast" and it is here that we see for perhaps the first time in the film, the grin Alex puts on his face during moments of maximum defiance. The assault of the "Cat Lady" (Miriam Karlin), is the most shocking example of the unusual complexity of tone in this film. The room the assault takes place in is covered with frankly erotic art on the walls, along with vague lighting fixtures that are so bright, they overexpose to the point that it is not possible to make out what they are. These lights allow Kubrick to film this and many other scenes with total flexibility. Alex’s attempt to talk his way into the house prompts the Cat Lady to phone the police. Her exaggerated politeness is both funny and serious. This is how upper-class people in Britain talk to one another. The manners remain, even though society doesn’t seem worth the effort under the circumstances. The Cat Lady’s house is outside of the dystopian world of Alex, and yet seems part of it. The fight between the Cat Lady, armed with a metal bust of Beethoven, and Alex, who is keeping her at bay with a large fiberglass sculpture of a (white) penis, is so strange that the symbolism of it doesn’t register until later viewings. But despite (or because of) this heavy-handed symbolism, the scene is still one of the most intense in the film. The intensity is capped by the betrayal of Alex by the droogs – he has been set up as punishment for his attitude toward them. The proper punishment of Alex for his various outrages constitutes the remainder of the picture. Deltoid arrives where the police are interrogating him (with a huge showing of politeness) in order to spit in Alex’s face – the grin of defiance appears again. And just what is the proper punishment for Alex? The Prison Chaplain (Godfrey Quigley) is shown describing the tortures of hell for the unrepentant, while a Prisoner keeps puckering his lips at Alex. All of this hectoring of the prisoners is shown as being hopelessly futile. Alex proceeds to read the Bible, but his interest is typically puerile. He envisions himself officiating at the crucifixion of Christ, and this, only 6 years after The Greatest Story Ever Told! You either find this window into Alex’s thinking intriguing or blasphemous – take your pick! The travail of prison is hardly dealt with, for Kubrick has other things up his sleeve. The Chaplain’s scene where Alex asks about "this new treatment everybody is talking about." contains the core philosophy of the film. "Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." In other words, he becomes "as queer as a clockwork orange." It is typical of the shifts in tone of this film that the Chaplain’s ruminations register in the ear even as Alex is playing the role of the pious Altar-Boy to the hilt. It’s interesting to note that the electronic music doesn’t really make its fullest presence felt until Alex is inducted into the Ludovico Medical Facility. The treatment is, for movie buffs anyway, pure torture. Alex is placed in a straight jacket, bolted to a chair, his eyelids are held open by clamps. It looks completely horrible. "But if I was to be a free malchick again, I would put up with much in the meantime, oh my brothers." Yes, Alex wants his precious freedom back. Like every good character, Alex has a code; there are some things he will not tolerate. Not without a fight anyway. They have some films of Hitler they want to show him, and the background music is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He screams out that, "It’s a SIN!" He knows that he is being conditioned to be repulsed by the things they are showing him. The stupidity of the doctors at the back of the auditorium, "So you’re keen on music?" "YEEEEEES!" Oh, us young punks loved that! They really aren’t paying attention! This feeling that Alex is at the mercy of the Ludovico Treatment, which is being tried out on him as a test case, is demonstrated in the next scene. Alex is put on a stage before a select group. Then there are examples of how Alex will react to situations that would "normally" bring out Alex’s aggression. In one of the chief ironies in the film, the "actor" (John Clive), is able to routinely take the audience’s focus away from Alex. This suggests that the audience is quite susceptible to being swayed by this demonstration. After being released from prison, Alex encounters one misfortune after another and all of them seem quite justified. He returns home to find that his parents have sold all his stuff and rented his room to a young man named Joe, who has perhaps less sympathy for others than Alex does. Set adrift with no place to go, Alex chances along with the Drunken Man from the opening reel. Alex is set upon by a pack of old derelicts, only to be "rescued" by two policemen – George and Dim, who take him out in the woods, beat him up and leave him there half dead. He crawls along to the "HOME" of Frank the writer, who is now being looked after by Julian (David Prowse, yes, that’s what the actor under the Darth Vader costume looks like). Here is one place where the film and Burgess’ novel diverge. It’s kept ambiguous, but the writer never fully recognizes Alex as the thug who raped his wife. Here, he does. Many people have negatively commented on Magee’s performance in this section of the film, but I have always liked it, knowing that revenge is a dish that is difficult to serve cold. The way Frank belts out his lines and slams the wine bottle on the tabletop – each one of them a passive-aggressive rebuke to this man who cause him such misery. But Kubrick doesn’t have him stop there. His conception of Frank’s character compels him to drug Alex, put him in a locked room, get the loudest stereo he can find, and blast him with the Ninth Symphony. Alex’s only solution is to head for that white, white window and jump out. As a result of his fall, Alex is in traction. The government is on the ropes due to the negative publicity Alex’s case has received – see, the rest of the world is still functioning properly; there are no such devices in Blade Runner! He has been "un-brianwashed." The Interior Minister (Anthony Sharp) convinces Alex to "play ball" by offering him the works – job, money, gifts. Alex shines him on by resorting to the cliches of co-operation he used long ago with Mr. Deltiod. The press is brought in and the Minister and Alex soak it all up. These two scoundrels both get what they want. In the final puzzling image, Alex observes, "I was cured alright." I have never met anyone who has even the faintest idea of what Kubrick had in mind by showing Alex and a woman having sex in the snow while a crowd in Edwardian dress stand by applauding. Just what does this mean? Very possibly, you are to draw your own conclusions. To me, it’s the antiquated body politic applauding the return of Alex’s unfettered ego. So many people over the years have complained about the "influence" of Clockwork Orange on young people. Some think that as the world comes to more closely resemble the world depicted in the film, that Clockwork is somehow showing kids a blueprint for their aggression. Kubrick withdrew the film from circulation in Britain until after his death (whatever that has to do with it), but I did not notice that his action had any affect on behavior in that country. What is overlooked so often is the effect the film does have. This is solely a personal perspective on my part. Seeing Clockwork as an impressionable young man of 17 or so, I doubt that I would have discovered the world of novels had I not been sufficiently interested in Clockwork to read Burgess’ book. Clockwork initiated a string of other films dealing with the future as it pertains to Beethoven (!). Edward G. Robinson commits suicide to the Sixth Symphony in Soylent Green (1973), and the Seventh Symphony is used here and there in Zardoz (1974). Another film still rattling around at the time, Ryan’s Daughter (1970), has a hero who loves Beethoven, and the Third Symphony is used there. If not for Clockwork, would I have gone out and bought a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? Or a collection of Rossini Overtures? It was only a hop, skip and a jump to Mahler, and Stravinsky and Fantasia and all the rest. But it was Clockwork that started the ball rolling. Goodness is chosen. Steven Spielberg likes to say that when he was 13 or so, Lawrence of Arabia came out, and when he saw it, he decided that making movies was what he wanted to do. This is what the really great films have to power to occasion out there in the hinterlands. Not everyone who sees Clockwork Orange runs out to buy all the symphonies of Beethoven. But not everyone rushes out to buy knives and bowler hats and learn "nadsat" either. People will always be swept away by this film. One way or the other. Goodness is chosen. 4.5.01 |
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Copyright
© 2001 by Kurt Wahlner
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