A Clockwork Orange

Released: February 2, 1972

Studio: Warner Bros.

Genre: sci-fi/cult

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 26.59 Worldwide: ?

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: ? Worldwide: 82.82

Directing: Stanley Kubrick

Screenwriting: Stanley Kubrick

Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri, Warren Clarke

Review:

This “true masterpiece from Stanley Kubrick” ^VD is “provocatively adapted” ^FS from the “stunning novel” ^A07 by Anthony Burgess. This “dystopian mediation on violence and free will” ^E18 is “truly harrowing, disturbing cinema.” ^BFI It is “a glossy, stylish, graphically-violent, controversial, futuristic, science-fiction satire about the effects of crime and punishment…on a British teenaged punk.” ^FS The “Singin’ in the Rain” sequence “remains one cinema’s most deeply upsetting” ^E18 scenes.

The story centers on Alex (McDowell), a young, violent leader and “his vicious gang of droogs” ^FS who “terrorize their way through London in this dark social satire with an eye on the cause and effects of ‘ultraviolence.’” ^A98

After a night of hooliganism…including gang rapes and beatings” ^FS Alex is imprisoned. He is selected as a candidate for “a grim, unorthodox governmental experiment” ^FS in which he is brainwashed against violence. However, “he is dehumanized in the process of being cured.” ^FS When he meets up with some former victims after his release, they “serve up their own form of justice.” ^VD

Kubrick’s film was still unavailable for screening in the UK at the end of the century “at the request of the film-maker himself. But despite, or perhaps because of, that, it retains an enduring underground popularity.” ^BFI