A Clockwork Orange

TUE May 11 6:30 pm Konvikt / film hall / free admission

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
United Kingdom 1971

director Stanley Kubrick
screenplay Stanley Kubrick
based on the novel by Anthony Burgess
director of photography John Alcott
editor Bill Butler
music Walter Carlos
cast Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Carl Duering, Warren Clarke, Michael Bates, Adrienne Corri


A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 darkly satirical science fiction film adaptation of Anthony Burgess 1962 novel of the same name. The film concerns Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell), a charismatic, psychopathic delinquent whose pleasures are classical music (especially Beethoven), rape, and ultraviolence. The film tells about the horrific crime spree of his gang, his capture, and attempted rehabilitation via a controversial psychological conditioning therapy. This cinematic adaptation features disturbing, violent images facilitating social commentary about contemporary social, political, and economic subjects in a dystopian, future Britain. It is a brilliant exploration of a repellent, inhuman world set in a future alarmingly like the present.


“The narrative invention was magical, the characters bizarre and exciting, the ideas brilliantly developed… the story was of a size and density that could be adapted to film without oversimplifying it or stripping it to the bones.”


A Clockwork Orange was one of the most violent and sexually graphic films ever to be passed uncut by the British Board of Film Censors, a fact highlighted by most of the media coverage. In the hope that this would make him appear to avoid exploiting the scandal, Kubrick restricted the film to a single London cinema before sanctioning a general release a year later. But this did nothing to stem the controversy, and when Kubrick received anonymous death threats, he asked Warner Bros to withdraw the film from Britain, where it would remain legally unavailable until 2000.