Product: A Clockwork Orange (1972)
Rating: 1.0
Long Goodbye
This atrocious film began the 30 year decline that sadly closed out the career of Stanley Kubrick. Artistically burned out after completing "Dr. Strangelove" and "2001", Kubrick wanted to film a biography of Napoleon, but was balked by a lack of financing. Not a man who let go of an obsession easily, he marked time over the next three decades by turning out five movies totally devoid of the committment he had shown in his early work.The author of the original novel, Anthony Burgess, was so sickened by Kubrick's mangled film that he eventually repudiated the book entirely, as well he might. The suggestion that psychopaths should be allowed to exercise their free will to wreak havoc on society is so transparently idiotic nobody can take it seriously. Combined with the terrible acting, cheap sets, and relentless vulgarity and misogyny, the result is about as ugly as moviemaking gets.