Stanley Kubrick’s films often place individuals in conflict with authority, but never to such controversial effect as in this adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s experimental 1962 novel. A Clockwork Orange stars Malcolm McDowell as Alex, an adolescent whose principal interests include rape, assault and Beethoven, and who is eventually subjected to extreme aversion therapy by the state.
The film’s bravura style, comprising modish interiors, Wendy Carlos’s electronic score and Burgess’s invented ‘Nadsat’ dialect, was overshadowed by its exuberantly realised sexual violence. Controversy led to the film’s withdrawal from British exhibition for over two decades. It remains a powerful essay on the pleasures and consequences of physical and psychological violence.
