From the first shot of a close-up on Malcolm McDowell’s eyes to the final dream sequence imagery with Malcolm frolicking naked with a woman while officials line both sides of the screen watching, we feel that what we are watching is a visual and intellectual feast the likes of which we had never seen before. What we witness over the course of two and a quarter hours is disturbing, vile, brutal, offensive, and riveting all at the same time, appealing to us on a sort of Jekyll and Hyde level as we see the worst impulses of humanity on display with our main character, yet we don’t fully hate him and can empathize with him when his situation changes for the worst.
Stanley Kubrick has taken Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel and crafted a film that is so cynical that it could have easily lost its audience in all the debauchery and violence, yet it manages to avoid that trapping and became a film that is fascinating to dissect on an intellectual level while at the same time challenging preconceived notions of morality and society’s role in reforming violent criminals. A director like Kubrick was ideal for this project because he, much like the main character of this film, viewed people like furniture, there to perform a certain function and nothing more. We even see that personified on screen in the opening shot at a milk bar where the furniture and fixtures are all made in the likeness of nude women, cast in white and devoid of all their humanity. Kubrick is a cold director, but he understands symbolism and what makes for a compelling and memorable visual.
What Kubrick didn’t know at the time he signed on to make A Clockwork Orange is that the version of the novel he was provided was different from the one found in Europe. The final chapter, considered to be a positive ending for some readers, depicts the protagonist maturing and outgrowing his sociopathic ways, entering into polite society even though he has been offered a government job that would hint at his heart not fully turning away from his earlier ways. This ending doesn’t appear in the American release of the novel, and when Kubrick was made aware of its existence, he dismissed it as being unrealistic. He felt people do not fundamentally change like that. It’s a pessimistic view on the world, one befitting the director himself.
Malcolm McDowell, as of this writing, is still alive and acting consistently, yet it seems unlikely that he will ever overshadow what he has done here. From that opening close-up as the camera pans out and we see this man wearing all white, save for a black bowler hat and a lone false eyelash below his right eye, we are seeing one of the most iconic characters in motion picture history. He is also one of the most fascinating characters to dissect. His character, Alex DeLarge, is a sociopath, spending his evenings running around with a small gang he calls his “droogs”: Georgie (James Marcus), Dim (Warren Clarke), and Pete (Michael Tarn). They assault and steal from the people on the streets, start fights with other gangs, and commit all sorts of violent acts on the public. One such occasion sees them break into the house of an elderly writer and sexually assault his wife.
But the rest of the droogs are getting tired of small-time theft and want to expand to more profitable ventures. Alex is in it just for the thrills, though. He comes from a well-off family and has the charisma to get all the women he wants, yet he isn’t satisfied with that. When his droogs bring up their frustrations with small-time stuff, he attacks them to reassert his dominance. They, in turn, wait until the right moment to turn on him. During a home invasion where Alex assaults a woman, they wait outside and knock him over the head with a bottle, leaving him behind to get arrested. When the woman dies, he is sentenced to fourteen years in prison. But he hears about a new program designed by the government to rapidly rehabilitate violent criminals and guarantees a quick release from prison, so he volunteers for the program.
What Alex goes through in this experimental rehabilitation program is akin to Pavlov and his dogs, a sort of association training where images of violence or sexual assault trigger nausea and discomfort in him. The idea behind it is that if the thought of violence makes him physically sick, he will cease to be a violent person. What this kind of psychological training doesn’t take into account is that while it effectively makes a person unable to commit violent acts, it does not remove the desire to do so any more than castrating someone takes away their sexual desires. We see this clearly during a demonstration at the clinic where Alex is being treated. A nude woman is introduced to him, and his first instinct is to grab her and have sex. It matters not that he knows he is being tested, nor that there is a whole group of people just a few feet away from him watching. All he thinks about is the sex. But he is unable to go through with his intentions as a wave of nausea overcomes him, and he cannot even lay his hands on her. This moment is then punctuated with the woman, completely unbothered by the situation, nor that she is exposed physically to everybody in the room, bows and waves at her audience like she was at the curtain call of a stage play. Again, Kubrick using people like props rather than real people.
The main form of Alex’s treatment boils down to injections of some unnamed chemical that causes extreme discomfort when seeing or thinking about violent actions, including defending himself. He takes these injections, then is strapped down in a theater with his eyes forced open while images of rape, assault, and even the Nazis are played for him. Without the ability to even shut his eyes, he is forced to watch even as he is getting violently sick. One unfortunate side effect of this conditioning is that, in one of the films, Beethoven’s 9th symphony, his favorite piece of music, is playing. This causes him to have the same nauseating effect just from hearing that song.
When he is finally released back into the world, he is forced to face a world that doesn’t really want him anymore. His parents have rented out his room, his droogs have taken jobs in law enforcement, and those he assaulted recognize him and have designs on getting revenge for the violence he once did to them. Two of his former droogs drag him out into the woods and nearly drown him, all while dressed in their policeman uniforms. Beaten and bloody, he finds himself on the steps of the home of the writer he had previously assaulted, who is now in a wheelchair. The wife has died from pneumonia, but the blame is placed on Alex because she was never the same after the assault. The writer hates what the government is doing in this rehabilitation program, writing at length against the leaders, but he hates Alex even more. They lock him up in a room and force him to listen to Beethoven’s Ninth, causing him immense pain and nausea. Alex escapes from this situation by leaping out a second story window and nearly dying.
The social commentary escalates even more when news gets out over what Alex has been experiencing since his release. Public opinion on this form of rehabilitation has shifted thanks in no small part to the writer, and the political figures who promoted and enforced it are now facing losing their jobs in the upcoming election. Naturally, they have to protect their jobs. Alex is showing no signs of aversion to violence or sex anymore but cannot be thrown back in prison lest the Minister admit their program was a failure. Thus, he visits Alex in the hospital and spins a false narrative for the press with Alex playing his part, all the while thinking about violence and sex while Beethoven’s Ninth plays. “I was cured, all right,” he narrates as imagery of debauchery play out in his mind, this time within the man-made lines of polite society.
Upon its initial release, A Clockwork Orange was given an X rating and Kubrick made some minor edits to get it just under the bar for an R rating. It was so controversial at the time it came out that Stanley Kubrick voluntarily had it pulled from British cinemas thanks to a combination of protests outside his home and a serious uprising of copycat crimes based on the droogs. It’s safe to say this film had a major effect on the populace at the time, an effect that can still be felt today. Its use of erotic imagery in both the art of the elite as well as the graffiti in the slums is at first shocking and then numbing. This is a vision of a nihilist future that really isn’t that far from the realities of the day; we can see it in the violent acts of the youth of today and can suppose that it’s only going to get worse, not better.
Polarizing as it is, it is a compelling picture to watch, which is one of the many reasons it sits on the AFI top 100 films of all time. You may like it or hate it, but there is no denying its power to evoke strong emotions; that is the whole point of it after all. A Clockwork Orange is one of those films where it is nearly impossible to watch it and feel blasé. To be human is to react strongly to things like this, one way or the other. We are not robots, mechanical like clockwork, but are organic beings like the orange. To try and program a person the same way as you would a robot not only is a fallacy, it goes against the very nature of being. That’s what Anthony Burgess was writing about, and that’s what this film is showing us.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Stanley Kubrick
Best Director: Stanley Kubrick
Best Screenplay - Based on Material from Another Medium: Stanley Kubrick
Best Film Editing: Bill Butler
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Release Date: February 2, 1972
Running Time: 136 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri, and Miriam Karlin
Directed By: Stanley Kubrick
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