A CLOCKWORK ORANGE & STANLEY KUBRICK'S MOMENTS OF LUCIDITY

In 1972 I went to see A Clockwork Orange. At this stage of cinema-going I don’t think anyone would have thought to call it “Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange” in the way that big directors now get to preface their latest meisterwork with their own moniker. Such ostentation was reserved pretty much for Alfred Hitchcock alone. The reference books say it came out in 1971 but it was definitely 1972 when I got to see it. In those days it was not uncommon to be made to wait six months before a major release made it to the provinces. It was in Liverpool and I and my friends had to queue around the block (another old habit that has died out) to get in. It was an event. Not in the sense of  being a long anticipated or rumoured-to-be-great film but in the sense that being young in 1972 required you to wear silly clothes, drive a mini or go to concerts staring Rory Gallagher (don’t ask). 

You see I only know in the vaguest way these days what is “in”. It’s probably not even called “in”, it’s probably  “cool” or some word not even in my vocabulary. (We could ask Mutt who is, after all, our token young person, though even he’s getting a bit past it.)  But in 1972 I had the zealous conformism of youth. I knew exactly what music was hip, which clothes I could and could not wear, what brand of cigarettes conveyed the right level of coolness (OK, some words never change) and what concerts, events and films you had to be seen at. A Clockwork Orange was one of those films. I’d even read the book, though Anthony Burgess was an establishment author. More importantly I had heard the soundtrack over and over and over again, even before seeing the film. Every student in the land had a copy of the album and played it at top volume as often as possible. The electronic treatment given to the music made all those classical tunes accessible even if you’d normally never dare admit liking such stuff. 

It’s important to know this background. Whatever critics say today or said in 1971, for the mostly young people who flocked to see the film, the act of going was as much a fashion statement as anything else. We didn’t expect to be intellectually stimulated, we wanted a fix of something that could be packaged into an album and interpreted as a statement of lifestyle and tell us what clothes we should be wearing. As I say it was an event.

Sometime between then and now Kubrick, for reasons that differ depending on the source you read, withdrew the film and it can’t be broadcast or sold in the UK though most of the rest of the world can enjoy it. This in turn has created a cult which says it is a masterpiece that we have been deprived of and a tabloid identiview which demonises it as a work of the devil which would unleash a tide of copycat violence and sexual depravity if it should ever come back into the hands of the feeble-minded British public. Look at this way – it’s like a very precious bear that you had as a child and, although it has been lost for many years, it still holds an elevated place of affection in your mind. 

A few days ago I was passing through Amsterdam airport and decided to exercise the rights enjoyed by my European counterparts who are not so prone to the English vice of turning into psychopathic killers the instant that they catch sight of a rice-flail. Yes, I spurned the acres of pornography, knowing that it would only lead to death, insanity and moral degradation and instead bought a copy of A Clockwork Orange.

The question to be answered then …… was it the same dear old bear or was it going to let me down? 

2 Molto vivace

Before we return to the main theme of A Clockwork Orange, let’s use the second movement to take a general look at Stanley Kubrick. Is he any good in general? Did he ever make any good films? Should we expect anything from him that other directors fail to give us? David Thompson in the indispensable “A Biographical Dictionary of Film” says that since 1961 “Four films have been passed out…. Which have taken an increasingly sententious and nihilistic view of our social and moral ethics, but which are as devoid of artistic personality as the worlds that Kubrick elegantly extrapolates. The laboriousness of this process needs to be stressed because it directly affects the seldom admitted tedium of the pictures.”

Other writers are more reverential. Me? On the whole I think he is very over-rated though there are passages in many of his films which shine out like jewels in a sea of mediocrity and crassness. Kubrick’s occasional lapses into lucidity. I suppose I’d better expand on that hadn’t I?

I can’t find much to complain about in Dr Stangelove or Spartacus (though he was only the hired hand on this) so I wont.

He has had some spectacular failures, though even these had their moments of interest. Despite the need that some critics have felt to defend his Lolita against Adrian Lynne’s remark, it has to be said that it was pretty awful. The alterations that were required to make it filmable were too great and the decision to film in England was disastrous. Despite interesting performances from SellersWinters and Mason it just ended up looking silly. In the same vein recreating Viet Nam in the London docklands for Full Metal Jacket was just as bad. Any credibility that the characters developed along the way was immediately nullified by crappy onscreen visuals that told you you were seeing a few palm trees stuck incongruously onto a disused English dock. 

In 1968 another great fashionable event in the life of the young Lizard was going to see 2001, A Space Odyssey. At this time you were not allowed by law to dislike the film though secretly I thought even then that it was tedious. Today I can freely tell you that I find it one of the most boring, pretentious and naff films I have ever had to suffer watching.  Thompson says it better than I ever can when he writes “…an elaborate, academic toy, made slow to seem important and to divert attention from its vacuity.”

The Shining almost makes it as a great film. Almost. The framing, the use of music and silence, the steadicam work, the sparse use of the gore and horror elements, the beautiful sets. It’s almost there as his “one great film”, as Thompson calls it. But it fails ultimately both because it is too long and because he pisses away all the good work by the terrible ending. He can’t resist long lingering shots and dialogue that goes on until it becomes redundant. It needs at least thirty minutes taking out of it. And that dreadful ending. Firstly he has Halloran come all the way back to the Overlook Hotel by plane car and snowmobile, just to have him walk through the door and be killed. This adds nothing to the plot whatsoever. He should have either stuck to Stephen King’s plot use of Halloran or cut him out of the last part of the film. But worse, much worse, he squanders all the tension and horror that has been building up by moving the action out of doors. Just run a different ending in the projection booth of your mind. Danny, the young boy, is pursued along the seemingly endless corridors of the Hotel pursued by Nicholson banging a croquet mallet against the walls. THWOK….. REDRUM ……. THWOK…. THWOK …. REDRUM…… REDRUM. Now contrast that with the very pretty but not very exciting pursuit through the snow filled maze. What a pity. 

Like a madman Kubrick has moments of great lucidity in most of his films. Moments which you can identify as being truly great cinema. His use of light and music, his imaginative use of special lenses and unusual angles. He can use his vision to make you look at something as if for the first time but then he usually spoils it all by gazing too long at the same thing.

3 Adagio molto e cantabile

So, at last, we come to A Clockwork Orange. Malcolm McDowell is Alex, a fashionable young thug who, with his droogs, visits ultra-violence upon straight society and rival gangs. After being sent to prison for murder he gets his chance to be released early if he agrees to drug-based aversion therapy that will stop his violent and sexual impulses. In very unsubtle ways we are shown that the violence that society commits against Alex is no less vicious than the beatings he inflicts on his victims. The film ends with some ambiguity though my reading is that Alex goes back to his old ways. There’s not much else to it.

For the first half hour or so we have a whole string of beautifully lucid moments from the mind of Stanley Kubrick. The violence is sensationally beautiful and the music it is paired with utterly inspired. Despite the usual shock of seeing how silly some of the fashions of the late 60’s and early 70’s were (it’s supposed to be futuristic but never looks it) this is film-making at its best. It looks good and it makes you feel good. That is not to say that as a viewer your suddenly discover that you too want to go out and beat up old tramps. It simply means that Kubrick has found a way to make you understand the exhilaration that these thugs feel. It doesn’t make you thuggish and it doesn’t make you like the characters on screen but still you like it.

Then it goes wrong.

Like Kubrick’s other films there are still moments along the way that will amaze and please you but interspersed with long boring bits which do not need to be there. I fell asleep and had to watch the last part the following morning.  Sequences in the prison and during his treatment are unnecessarily protracted and wordy. It is almost as though he knew what a controversy the film would create in a Britain which swung on the outside but was still the crazy anal-retentive puritan on the inside. He was justifying what was so blindingly obvious that a few minutes of film time would have been enough to make the point. The whole film runs for 136 minutes. Cut down to 90 minutes it could have been a masterpiece. But then so could The Shining. 

There are at least two sequences of sub-Ken Russell visions in this film.  I say this not to denigrate Ken Russell but to indicate that Russell is actually one of our greatest film-makers, much maligned by the average film critic. Russell can do it whilst Kubrick does it only half-heartedly. The film is undoubtedly misogynistic and I’m not sure if that’s because of the source material, Kubrick or the 1970’s zeitgeist. Still, I can’t think of any roles for women in his films where they have been portrayed as strong, admirable characters. Can you? UK readers of the Lizard’s Lair may enjoy the part played by John Savident, alias Fred Elliot of Coronation Street. He looks much the same as he does 25 years later though he used to go in for posh accents in those days. 

A Clockwork Orange is pure Kubrick. It goes on too long. It is sleep-inducingly boring in parts. When it is good it is brilliant. One of the best first half hours ever seen in a film but with a disappointing and long coda.

4 Presto – Allegro assai

Who knows why Kubrick banned his own film in the UK, where he has lived since 1961? I think that he is wrong to do so though, seeing the hypocritical tide of new moralism sweep through Britain I am sure the British censor would condemn it as a video nasty if Kubrick did relent. It’s weird, isn’t it? There are any number of more graphically violent films that no-one ever challenges and Walter Hill’s The Warriors is essentially Clockwork Orange without the moralising.  In Britain you can’t have a film that uses the finest classical music to illustrate violence and you can’t have violence with sex at any price. Never mind that no sane person would ever be led to violence by watching this film. 

Watching a Clockwork Orange again after such a long period of time bought up a lot of issues for me. Perhaps we should ban a few more films for 25 years and see what they look like when they come around again. Let’s not forget that when we are young films are often fashion statements. But having recognised this I can’t help wondering why Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is one of my most favourite pieces of music.

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