The novel
1971 is a long time ago so I imagine there might be a fair few here who haven’t seen this incredible film. Directed superbly by Stanley Kubrick, it’s based on the 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess.
The perfection of Kubrick’s direction encompasses the circular nature of Alex’s journey from teenage ultraviolence, through a brutal prison system, to an avant garde psychological facility.
But when Alex returns home, around the half way point, the story turns in on itself and circles, event by event, back to the beginning.
I obtained a 1080p copy and re-watched it on a large screen to reacquaint myself, and it is as brutal and affecting as I recall.
The book is partially written in an argot called "Nadsat", from the Russian suffix that is equivalent to '-teen' in English. In the film it’s still very present, although Kubrick uses the context to make us immediately aware of what the argot means. EG, the film begins with a closeup of Alex, dressed in his night attire and with false eyelash. The camera pans out, slowly revealing his three ‘droogs’, comrades in crime. They’re drinking amphetamine-laced milk in the Korova Milk Bar.
Soon, Alex and his droogs set off as ‘hogs of the road’ in a stolen Durango 95, which to me looked a bit like a Lotus. And the horrific “ultraviolence” begins.
The sound track is dominated by Beethoven, although it’s played on a Korg synthesiser to menacing, psychedelic effect. This ain’t no Beethoven I ever heard. According to Wikipedia, At the American publisher's insistence, Burgess allowed its editors to cut the redeeming final chapter from the US version, so that the tale would end on a darker note, with Alex becoming his old, ultraviolent self again – an ending which the publisher insisted would be "more realistic" and appealing to a US audience. The film adaptation, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is based on the American edition of the book, and is considered to be "badly flawed" by Burgess.
A screen grab from near the end of the film.
To watch this film again reminded me very much how avant garde the early 70s were. The brutalist architecture. Just look at the amazing fashion (shown in the screen grab). The pillar-box-red plastic fashion. His floral tie.
As in the later McDowell film “O Lucky Man” there is a strong theme of the underlying corruption of government and the police, and the repression of the Left. At the end, the writer character is ‘put away for the good of the public’.
I’m a novelist, and I think that Burgess himself, the author of A Clockwork Orange, might have thought he could incur the wrath of the right-wing Conservative government and be ‘put away’.
Notes:
He wrote in his autobiographical You've Had Your Time (1990), that in re-learning Russian at this time, he found inspiration for the Russian-based slang Nadsat that he created for A Clockwork Orange, going on to note, "I would resist to the limit any publisher's demand that a glossary be provided."
