"CLOCKWORK" TIMELESS

          Stanley Kubrick has the best reputation in filmmaking because he did everything exceptionally well and never repeated himself. He produced, directed, and wrote. He worked camera, lights, and sound. He had a hand in costumes, publicity--virtually everything. Many filmmakers have made much more money than Stanley Kubrick, and many have received more awards, but rightly or wrongly, no one's mojo comes as close.

          Of all the movies Kubrick made (thirteen features and three short documentaries), only one was so dangerous that, for the safety of his family, he had to pull it from United Kingdom distribution for 27 years until his death.

          A Clockwork Orange (1971), is a dystopian black comedy, a subversive film with a futuristic visual style and disturbing scenes involving what the central figure in his narration calls "a bit of the old ultra-violence."

          Played to the hilt by Malcolm McDowell, Alexander DeLarge is the sort of a boy who might enjoy reading The Bible only if he imagines himself as a Roman soldier scourging Christ. And that's one of his nicer traits.

          Wearing a bowler hat and codpiece and carrying a cane, Alex sports false upper and lower eyelashes around his right eye like tribal paint, the window to his soul resembling a gear cog. McDowell's sharp, sarcastic narration creates an intimacy with the audience, even inviting complicity. A literary antecedent might be Poe's narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart."

          It is a disturbing fact that Anthony Burgess wrote the novel, published in 1962, as a cathartic exercise subsequent to his first wife's brutalization. Containing 242 words of a slang language Burgess created called Nadsat, A Clockwork Orange concerns the state taking the sweetness and color out of violent offenders and turning them into machines.

          What makes the film remarkable is Kubrick's sheer facility with the medium. Juxtaposing classical music with primal pursuits, Kubrick creates friction uniquely, unforgettably. Loaded with iconic images, Clockwork explodes across the screen.

          Eighteen years prior, Marlon Brando terrorized parents in The Wild One playing the leader of a motorcycle gang. Yet compared to Clockwork, The Wild One plays like Mary Poppins.

          No, Clockwork is not the most violent film on record. Far from it. Arguably it doesn't even compare with the nightly news. But Clockwork has much more going on than a few scenes of highly stylized violence.

          When, for example, Alex breaks into the health farm where a woman practices calisthenics surrounded by cats, keen observation reveals a painting in the background depicting, not merely a nude female form, but one with the clothing specifically removed from covering the breasts in exactly the same manner which Alex has imitated with a pair of scissors during an assault.

          So the filmmaker seems to be saying that Alex and his three droogs are themselves the product of an abusive system and degraded culture. It's the water in which they swim.

          Clockwork is one of those rare films where the viewer can always find something new because to call Kubrick a perfectionist is putting it mildly.

          Then there's the Ninth. Kubrick incorporates Beethoven's greatest symphony into his work just as Beethoven did with Schiller's poem. Bursting with "angel trumpets and devil trombones," A Clockwork Orange remains unsurpassed as a cinematic experience as challenging as it is sublime.

Malcolm McDowell

Stewart Kirby writes for

THE INDEPENDENT

and

TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE