Stanley Kubrick‘s A Clockwork Orange will celebrate its 50th birthday on 12.19.21. I don’t know if I’ll be able to summon fresh interest as I’ve seen this cynical, ice-cold film too many times, but the new 4K Ultra HD Bluray from Warner Home Video — a fresh harvest, sure to look better than the current Bluray version — is too appetizing to refuse. I bought it today on Amazon. The street date is 9.21.21.
Orange remains a chilly, dead-on capturing of Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel, and it seems doubly fascinating when you regard it as a portrait of the chilly, German-like social scientist that Pauline Kael imagined that Kubrick had become in ’71, and indeed the fellow that Kubrick had more or less evolved into since he made Dr. Strangelove seven or eight years earlier.
It’s still a crisp, clean, mesmerizing film, and I’ll never stop worshipping that final shot of those well-dressed 19th Century couples clapping approval as Alex and a scampy blond cavort in the snow. But man, it’s really cold and almost induces nausea from time to time. And yet at the same time it’s genuinely amusing here and there. Every line and gesture delivered by Michael Bates‘ chief prison guard is a hoot, and I chuckle every time I see that fat, middle-aged fuckface making kissy-face gestures at Malcolm McDowell‘s Alex in the prison chapel.
At the same time I can’t honestly say that I like A Clockwork Orange much any more. I was always more impressed with the scene-by-scene verve than what it all amounted to in the end. I still respect the visual energy and exquisite framings (John Alcott was the dp) and the Wendy Carlos meets Gene Kelly meets lovely lovely Ludwig Van musical score, and I still admire the ironic ruthlessness and even fiendishness, but I’m not even sure if I like McDowell’s performance any more. (I feel a much greater rapport these days with his Mick Travis character in Lindsay Anderson‘s If…) I respect Orange historically, of course, and I still love the stand-out moments from the flawless first act, but it hasn’t delighted me overall for years.
A Clockwork Orange was the first Kubrick film that felt truly misanthropic — a high-style show-off movie that sold audiences on the idea that Kubrick-stamped cruelty and brutality were palatable — that irony and arch acting styles somehow changed the game. But it was always more amoral than moral, and pretty much devoid of human compassion. Orange has 23 significant or otherwise noteworthy characters, and only one could be honestly described as decent or humane — Godfrey Quiqley‘s prison chaplain.
A Dickensian crime-and-punishment thing, Orange is composed of four acts or movements. The first act is about the wicked rush of sociopathic “fun”, but the second and third acts (applying the Luduvico technique + Alex suffering for his crimes after being released from prison) comprise a long and punishing slog. The film rebounds during its brief fourth act (the hospitalized Alex cuts a deal with Anthony Sharp‘s Minister of the Interior, and is restored to his old wicked self) and the ending shot, a sexual fantasy sequence, is the equal of Kubrick’s “We’ll Meet Again” finale in Dr. Strangelove.
Anyone who says that Orange‘s first act, for all the savagery, wasn’t meant as a darkly enjoyable satire is self-deluding.
Orange obviously delivered a moral point (morality without choice isn’t morality) but re-watch that first act and tell me Kubrick wasn’t getting off on some level…that he wasn’t savoring those acrobatic beatings and that horridly cruel musical rape in Patrick Magee‘s home, not to mention the one that almost happens before Alex’s gang challenges Billy Boy’s crew to a rumble.
And that long, slow third act in which Alex has to suffer an endless post-penal gauntlet…punished and clubbed and condemned ad infinitum. And those idiotic deux ex machinas! Meeting the same old alky and getting beaten up by his old friends, discovering that his old droogies have become hooligan police officers, accidentally staggering into Magee’s home a second time and apparently not recalling what had happened there before, as evidenced by Alex moronically singing “Singin’ In The Rain” while taking a bath…the mind reels.
