By Geoffrey Macnab for The Independent
It’s a film that once caused outrage and was even withdrawn from circulation by its own director following consultation with the police. Copycat acts of violence were blamed on it and cinemas were closed down for showing it. Nonetheless, in 2020, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) appears finally to have been rehabilitated. Once almost impossible to see, it is currently available to stream on Amazon in the UK and is one of the “classic” new movies out on Netflix in the US this month.
If you’re bored of The Crown or jaded by watching yet another Scandi-noir box set in lockdown, you can therefore give yourself a jolt with “a bit of the old ultra-violence” as the “droog” protagonist Alex (Malcolm McDowell) describes his gang’s behaviour. One of cinema’s most notorious movies is only a click away.
In the first 10 minutes of the film alone, Alex and his pals kick an old drunk almost to death beneath an underpass, have a vicious scrap with a rival gang and break into a writer’s house. They cripple the writer (Patrick Magee) while raping his wife (Adrienne Corri). The scene is all the more disconcerting because Alex performs his misdeeds while dancing around, giving a sprightly rendition of “Singin’ in the Rain”. There is something disturbing too about the way the droogs spend their leisure time, between bouts of violence, enjoying soft drinks in the Korova Milk Bar.
A Clockwork Orange caused paroxysms of anger and indignation when it was released in the UK. The New York film critics had already voted it the film of the year but the British press reacted furiously to what the Daily Mirror called its “sick malevolence”. However, there are certain myths about the film that don’t stand up to scrutiny. It was never banned in UK cinemas. By the time in 1974 when Kubrick asked Warner Bros to withdraw it because of the real-life violence it was alleged to be inspiring, the film had already been on release for well over a year, doing bumper business in the West End of London. That was a far longer run than for any new films released in cinemas today.
Anthony Burgess, who had sold the rights to his 1962 novel for a few hundred pounds, had been inspired to write A Clockwork Orange by a horrific real-life incident in wartime London in which his wife was sexually assaulted by American army deserters. There was no intention on either the novelist’s part or that of Kubrick to glamorise the violence.
“Nobody except people who were trying to prove that Clockwork Orange was an evil film, nobody could believe that one was in favour of Alex. It’s only that in telling a story like that, you want to present Alex as he feels and as he is to himself,” Kubrick explained in an interview with French critic Michel Ciment. The director’s words are also heard in Gregory Monro’s new documentary, Kubrick By Kubrick, which recently premiered at the virtual Doclisboa Festival and features rare audio recordings of the reclusive American film-maker speaking about his work.
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Read more at: The Independent
Source: The Independent
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