MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Stanley Kubrick dissects the nature of violence in this darkly ironic, near-future satire, adapted from Anthony Burgess's novel, complete with "Nadsat" slang. Classical music-loving proto-punk Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his "Droogs" spend their nights getting high at the Korova Milkbar before embarking on "a little of the old ultraviolence," such as terrorizing a writer, Mr. Alexander (Patrick Magee), and gang raping his wife (who later dies as a result). After Alex is jailed for bludgeoning the Cat Lady (Miriam Karlin) to death with one of her phallic sculptures, Alex submits to the Ludovico behavior modification technique to earn his freedom; he's conditioned to abhor violence through watching gory movies, and even his adored Beethoven is turned against him. Returned to the world defenseless, Alex becomes the victim of his prior victims, with Mr. Alexander using Beethoven's Ninth to inflict the greatest pain of all. When society sees what the state has done to Alex, however, the politically expedient move is made. Casting a coldly pessimistic view on the then-future of the late '70s-early '80s, Kubrick and production designer John Barry created a world of high-tech cultural decay, mixing old details like bowler hats with bizarrely alienating "new" environments like the Milkbar. Alex's violence is horrific, yet it is an aesthetically calculated fact of his existence; his charisma makes the icily clinical Ludovico treatment seem more negatively abusive than positively therapeutic. Alex may be a sadist, but the state's autocratic control is another violent act, rather than a solution. Released in late 1971 (within weeks of Sam Peckinpah's brutally violent Straw Dogs), the film sparked considerable controversy in the U.S. with its X-rated violence; after copycat crimes in England, Kubrick withdrew the film from British distribution until after his death. Opinion was divided on the meaning of Kubrick's detached view of this shocking future, but, whether the discord drew the curious or Kubrick's scathing diagnosis spoke to the chaotic cultural moment, A Clockwork Orange became a hit. On the heels of New York Film Critics Circle awards as Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, Kubrick received Oscar nominations in all three categories. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Vistavision)
• Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: German, English, Spanish, French, Danish
• Features:
  • Commentary by Malcolm McDowell and historian Nick Redman
  • Channel Four documentary Still Tickin': The Return of Clockwork Orange
  • New featurette Great Bolshy Yarblockos!: Making A Clockwork Orange
  • Career profile O Lucky Malcolm! (in high definition)
  • Theatrical trailer

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Adapted Screenplay - 1971 (Stanley Kubrick)
•     Nominated Best Director - 1971 (Stanley Kubrick)
•     Nominated Best Editing - 1971 (Bill Butler)
•     Nominated Best Picture - 1971 (Stanley Kubrick)

• American Film Institute

•     Won 100 Greatest American Movies - 1998

• British Academy of Film and Television Arts

•     Nominated Best Picture - 1972 (Stanley Kubrick)

• Directors Guild of America

•     Nominated Best Director - 1971 (Stanley Kubrick)

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Nominated Best Director - 1971 (Stanley Kubrick)
•     Nominated Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama - 1971 (Malcolm McDowell)
•     Nominated Best Picture - Drama - 1971

• New York Film Critics Circle

•     Won Best Director - 1971 (Stanley Kubrick)
•     Won Best Picture - 1971

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Stanley Kubrick

• Producer:

  Stanley Kubrick

• Screenwriter:

  Stanley Kubrick

• Book Author:

  Anthony Burgess

• Cinematographer:

  John Alcott

• Featured Music:

  Ludwig van Beethoven

• Composer (Music Score):

  Walter Carlos

• Featured Music:

  Gioachino Antonio Rossini, Henry Purcell

• Editor:

  Bill Butler

• Production Designer:

  John Barry

• Art Director:

  Russell Hagg, Peter Shields

• Associate Producer:

  Bernard Williams

• Executive Producer:

  Max Raab, Si Litvinoff

• Costume Designer:

  Milena Canonero

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  John Jordan

• Makeup:

  George Partleton, Barbara Daly, Freddie Williamson

• First Assistant Director:

  Dusty Symonds, Derek Cracknell

• Stunts:

  Roy Scammell

REVIEW:

• After the visionary journey through space and time of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick offered a very different look at the future (which seemed uncomfortably close to the present) in A Clockwork Orange. But if one has to compare A Clockwork Orange to any of Kubrick's other films, it comes closest to Dr. Strangelove: for all its horrific violence and troubling moral ambiguity, it is ultimately a satire, and, like Dr. Strangelove, it wrings a shocking amount of humor from situations that few people would think of as funny. With the notable exception of Alex (Malcolm McDowell in the best performance of his career), most of the characters are little more than cartoons (with dialogue to match), while a great deal of the violence walks a fine line between Looney Tunes absurdity and crushingly vivid brutality. Kubrick's future state is often garish and ugly, veering between an amusingly hideous riot of color and texture gone wrong and the decaying remnants of a cinder-block nation (remarkably, Kubrick and production designer John Barry built only one set for the entire film, with everything else shot on existing locations that were dressed in "futuristic" style). And Kubrick throws in plenty of crude comic relief that suggests some degenerate variation on a Carry On film; from the overexcited school representative to the doctor and nurse enjoying recreational sex as Alex regains consciousness, Kubrick places his grim vision in an England where foolish absurdity is the order of the day. And while Alex seems one of the few characters capable of making a complex moral choice (never mind how sinister his choices happen to be), he also takes his choice more seriously than anyone else in the film. Alex has adopted violent hedonism not out of profit, politics, or pragmatism, but because he likes it, and, while this makes him difficult to admire, he's still the smartest and freest man in the film's moral universe. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi