Approaches to Film
A Clockwork Orange
US (1971): Science Fiction
Rated R, Color, 137 minutes
Student summary
As a work of visual art, A Clockwork Orange has its own place in film history. Kubrick's cinematography and avant-garde backgrounds, along with fantastical costuming, give the film its distinct look. Many different aspects of filmmaking art and industry can be studied by focusing on this picture. Kubrick's manipulation of the original novel (some would say to pornographic ends), his futuristic setting, and the stylistic choices he made in terms of music and cast have made A Clockwork Orange one "nasty shocker" (as Burgess called it). Transcending all of this, of course, is the philosophical message of the film: some degree of evil is necessary for the preservation of free will.
Baseline Synopsis
Teenage delinquents Alex (Malcolm McDowell), Dim (Warren Clarke), Georgie (James
Marcus), and Pete (Michael Tarn) living in a futuristic British state, indulge in nightly
rounds of beatings, rapings, and, as they call it, "ultraviolence". Among their
victims is prominent writer Mr. Alexander (Patrick Magee); they beat him senseless, and
brutally gang-rape his attractive wife (Adrienne Corri). (Alexander later becomes manic,
and his wife dies as a result of the attack). After violently quelling an uprising among 
his own gang, Alex is betrayed by them
during an attack on another home, having been knocked senseless and left for the police.
In prison, he agrees to undergo experiments in "aversion therapy" in order to
shorten his term. Now nauseated by the mere sight of violence, he is pronounced cured and
released into the outside world. There, vengeance of one kind or another is wreaked upon
him by his erstwhile fellow gang-members (now policemen), and by his former victims
(including Magee). After another spell in prison Alex returns home, where we expect him to
resume his old criminal ways.
Critique
Adapted from the novel by British author Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
is a visually dazzling, highly unsettling work that revolves around one of the few truly
amoral characters in either film or literature. It pits a gleefully vicious individual
against a blandly inhuman state, leaving the viewer little room for emotional involvement
(though McDowell gives such an ebullient, wide-eyed performance as the Beethoven-loving
delinquent that it is hard for us not to feel some sympathy toward him). Meanwhile, we are
dazzled by Kubrick's directorial 
pyrotechnics—slow
motion, fast motion, fish-eye lenses, etc.; entertained by John Barry's witty,
ostentatious sets; and intrigued by dialogue laden with Burgess's specially created slang
(gang members are "droogies", sex is "the old inout", etc.). This is a
particularly graphic film which has divided critics, but which no serious moviegoer can
afford to ignore.
Awards. A Clockwork Orange won four Academy Award nominations: Best Picture; Best Director; Best Adapted Screenplay; and Best Editing. The film was also honored by the New York Film Critics Circle with awards for Best Picture and Best Director.
Questions for Discussion
- What does Kubrick accomplish in the initial scenes of A Clockwork Orange? How is Alex characterized? By what means, and to what ends? How are we, as viewers, intended to react to him?
- What are your affective responses to A Clockwork Orange? What -- specifically -- motivated those responses?
- How does the approach to adaptation here seem similar to, or different from, that of the others that we’ve studied (Being There, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Rear Window, Snow White, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest)? For those of you who’ve read the novel, does the adaptation seem close? loose? literal? How does Kubrick’s approach to the "first-person" problem differ from Hitchock’s, Ophuls’s, and Forman’s?
- Like in Lang’s M, in Clockwork Orange we see a society confronted not only with a pathological murderer, but also with the realization that the only truly effective cures are themselves inhumane, yielding their own deleterious effects. What solution to the problem of pathological violence does each of these films seem to advocate?
- What are the different meanings of "a clockwork orange," and what is the thematic relevance of each?
- Do you agree or disagree with the film’s theme—that without free choice, humans are no longer human, and that to choose evil is better than to have no choice at all? (Or, alternatively, do you think that the film argues some other thesis?) What specific cinematic elements help convey the film's theme?
- In Burgess’s novel, the NADSAT language works to a number of effects, most prominently among them buffering the novel’s horror, which we have to consider (grimly) humorous as we read of "loose zooblies, dripping krovvy, and poogly glazzies" (and not "loose teeth, dripping blood, and frightened eyes"). It also reminds us that the story is indeed a fiction, not something "real." How is NADSAT distorted, preserved, or otherwise depicted in Kubrick’s film, and to what effect?
- Obviously, a novel like Burgess’s is hardly "set to music" the in the manner of a contemporary narrative film. To what effect does Kubrick use music here? To heighten our emotional response? To convey characterization through leitmotif? To provide an ironic counterpoint to onscreen action? Discuss the role of sound in the film, from Alex's fondness for Beethoven to the effects of the generalized score.
- What might it mean that Alex’s most violent actions take place in such "aestheticized" environments—the "cat lady’s" art studio, the writer’s library, Alex’s Beethoven-shrine bedroom? What do they have in common, and what might we infer from their "commonality"?
Acknowledgments
Jessica McLain, Sean O'Reilly, Merry Johnson, and Andrew Adams (H140, S'99) contributed discussion questions, ideas, and materials to this page.
