"I was cured alright!"

Rating: 10/10 (23 August 2011)

When I was in my teens, I resisted joining street gangs, believing such groups to be essentially mindless. When they put on their clothes to go out each evening, they were not just following the latest fashions, but putting on battle uniforms. Joining would in my view been a major error of judgement. In the early '80's, a new street gang came to my town. On Saturday afternoons, half a dozen or so young men strutted about the shopping centre in white boiler suits and bowler hats, and carrying canes. People kept well away from them. I did not know it then, but they were mimicking the 'Droogs' - the gang from Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange' ( 1971 ). Like Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs' ( 1971 ) and Hooper's 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' ( 1974 ), a mystique built up around the film because it was impossible to see for many years. When it finally became commercially available - after the director's death - a minority grumbled it was 'overrated'. Not so. 'A Clockwork Orange' is marvellous. Based on Anthony Burgess' provocative and thought-provoking novel, it is about a gang with no respect for authority led by 'Alex DeLarge' ( Malcolm McDowall ) whose hobbies are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven. They even have their own language. A good night out to them involves at some point the beating-up of an old tramp. In one of the most shocking scenes ever put on film, they break into the home of writer Mr.Alexander ( Patrick Magee ) and rape his wife ( Adrienne Corri ) in front of him while warbling 'Singing In The Rain'. Eventually, Alex is caught, jailed, and subjected to a new kind of aversion therapy. No longer capable of violent acts, he is released. But some of his victims have not forgotten nor forgiven him, and set about exacting revenge...
This is a fascinating study of the morality of free will. It poses the question - is a man who has has been born good better than one who has had goodness imposed on him? Is the State's brainwashing of Alex any better than the ultra-violence he himself practised? McDowall is magnificent, playing a sneering, arrogant young man with nothing but contempt for the world and everyone in it. But when he is reprogrammed you start feeling sorry for him! Also in the cast are Warren Clarke as fellow Droog 'Dim' and Michael Bates as a 'Prison Guard'. The recently deceased Miriam Karlin is a cat lover whom Alex beats to death with a huge plastic phallus! Kubrick himself wrote the script and did a fair job, but alas changed the ending. In the book, Alex renounces his violent past, choosing to settle down and have a family. But the film creates the impression he will revert back to his bad old ways.
The film attracted controversy on its release for its explicit violence and sex ( Alex beds a couple of young girls at one point, and a joke is made out of it by the sex being sped up to music ). Kubrick withdrew it after copy-cat crimes were reported. Even now it is disturbing to watch, yet impossible to ignore. Yes, it is extremely violent, but the storyline demands it to be. Once seen it can never be forgotten.