Runs Like Clockwork

Rating: Null/10 (16 March 1999)

A Clockwork Orange has achieved something of a reputation since it was first released 27 years ago. It was withdrawn shortly after its first screening in the UK amid reports that gangs were copying the violence featured in the film, and to this day it is still unofficially banned in this country. Possessing a copy alone is a criminal offence. This is a great shame, because it really is superb film.
It tells the story of Alex, the leader of vicious street gang the Droogs. His idea of a good time is a bit of `the old ultra-violence' accompanied by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. When he kills a woman whilst attempting to rape her, his gang deserts him and he is prosecuted for murder. Faced with the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, he jumps at the chance to be a test subject for a new method of rehabilitation which could see him a free man in days. But at what cost?
Although it was very violent for its day (1971), A Clockwork Orange is not nearly as disturbing or explicit as Crash or Natural Born Killers, often because here the music is incongruous enough to make the scene more surreal. For example, a man is kicked to within an inch of his life as Alex sings `Singin' In The Rain'. The point of the film is highly subversive, that the government is even more brutal than Alex himself, but this was lost on many people who could not see past the adult content of the film in the first place. It is a brilliantly produced piece of work, with the design particularly outstanding: the fact that the concrete and rural locations are not dressed at all to match the sterile futurism of the sets e.g. the Korova milk-bar, with its total lack of colour.
This is, in short, an outstanding film, far outstripping Kubrick's other alleged `masterpieces', like the totally unfunny Dr. Strangelove or the exercise in utter tediousness that is The Shining. Now that this genius of the silver screen has passed on leaving Eyes Wide Shut as his legacy to critics and fans alike, it seems that his incandescent brilliance in this film will never be contested. Let us hope that Warner Bros. do the decent thing and ignore those narrow-minded idiots who cannot understand it by fulfilling Kubrick's wishes, and finally giving the film the British release it so richly deserves.