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Whistle Stopper - A Clockwork Orange
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Our Price: $6.94
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Manufacturer: Warner Studios
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780790701028
ISBN: 0790701022
Label: Warner Studios
Manufacturer: Warner Studios
Publisher: Warner Studios
Studio: Warner Studios
Theatrical Release Date: 1972-02-02
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Classic Movie with an Unavoidable Ability to Place Itself in Modern Times
Comment: A Clockwork Orange (Two-Disc Special Edition)
'A Clockwork Orange' the movie, whether accepted by the author of the book or not, is very witty, scary, shocking (even today), and humorous in several different instances.
It would be difficult to see a new adaptation of the movie without judging by how well crafted the original truly is.
This movie, although disturbing at times, is definately worth buying and adding it to your collection of classics. It will forever fit in the modern day world whether a year from now, or one hundred years from now.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pleasantly suprised
Comment: I was very hesitant to watch this movie at first. But once I watched it, I was blown away. A terrific movie and definitely one of my top 10 favorite movies.
Customer Rating:
Summary: REEL DROOGS
Comment: Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man!
It all started with a movie called If... by Lindsay Anderson, starring a teenage actor named Malcolm McDowell. A coming-of-age story at an English boarding school, a Tom Brown's Schooldays with a violent, apocalyptic climax, as McDowell's Mick Travis and two of his friends take revenge on their sadistic tormenters by climbing up on the roof of the school and blasting away at the teachers and students with machine guns. Because it was the late `60s and something was happening that the "old school" didn't seem to understand. I saw the movie many years ago, perhaps at the UC Theater in Berkeley, or the late lamented Unicorn Theater in La Jolla. Certain scenes are vivid in my memory: young Mick being tortured (I'm sorry - disciplined) in an empty gym by an upperclassman with a cane, who took a run before each terrible blow. Mick and his girlfriend riding a stolen motorcycle in the woods. Their wild grins as they gunned down their enemies.
Someone who must have liked what he saw in If...was Stanley Kubrick, because shortly thereafter McDowell was cast to play the defining role of his career: Alex, the ultraviolent, Beethoven-loving thug in A Clockwork Orange. And, while still wrapping up Kubrick's film, McDowell began shooting O Lucky Man! with his friend and mentor Anderson. These two English motion pictures, filmed at least partly in the same year, one a classic, the other an enduring cult favorite, feature the same star and an overlapping cast, with thematic elements in common. The two films are like fraternal twins, worth examining together.
Starting with the source material, I read Anthony Burgess' book back in high school - the orange Ballantine paperback with the helpful glossary provided by the publisher. I understand he wasn't thrilled with the movie, but clearly the film is much larger and more vividly imagined than the book. Kubrick wrote the screenplay. For O Lucky Man!, the source was an idea by McDowell about a young coffee salesman and his adventures, to be called Coffee Man. Anderson and his screenwriter David Sherwin envisioned something more epic - a tale that would visit the spirit of the age while it chronicled the young man's growing wisdom and experience. So Anderson's film would show The Way We Live Now, while Kubrick's would vividly portray The Way We Might Live in the Near Future.
Music is a vitally important accompaniment to each director's vision. A Clockwork Orange suddenly springs to life with an extreme close-up of Alex in the Korova Milkbar, as Walter (later Wendy) Carlos' severe electronic music bursts forth. Similarly, after a silent movie mini-drama showing the brutal genesis of "coffee for the breakfast table," O Lucky Man! begins with the word NOW exploding from the screen and an extreme close-up of Alan Price's hands crashing down onto the keys of his Fender Rhodes electric piano, launching the first chords of the title song. Price and Carlos each provide a brilliant soundtrack, with Price's witty, sardonic rock songs accenting and commenting on the action, while Carlos' beautiful and eerie synthesizers create a futuristic soundscape that helps sustain Kubrick's vision.
What are Alex and Travis like? How are they similar and different? By now everyone knows Alex. We might describe him as amoral, or bipolar - certainly a sociopath. He can be very likable and friendly ("Hi hi hi Mr. Deltoid!") and yet perform the most horrific rapes and beatings without any apparent understanding that he is sick and evil. Alex is a modern "anti-hero," a character embodying the worst qualities of his future society. In the first half of the film we are fascinated by his raw charisma, yet sickened and disgusted by his foul deeds. Yet Kubrick succeeds in turning the tables on us, and we actually feel sorry for Alex after his "cure," when he is beaten up by his former droogies and left for dead outside the house of the writer. Only to be shocked and sickened once again by our own misguided compassion when he begins his chilling rendition of "Singing in the Rain" in the bathtub. As a final note on McDowell's Alex - we can't take our eyes off him when he's on-screen. The performance is that powerful.
Travis couldn't be more different. His chief qualities are innocence and idealism, with a youthful ambition to succeed. We first see him as a victim, in the silent mini-movie, and he will be victimized again and again - yet keep coming back, picking himself up. Mick Travis is an everyman, and if he is the same character seen gunning down people at the end of If... ("Was your headmaster right to expel you from school?" asks his interrogator in the military base,) then he has changed and mellowed. Mick does not have the scene-stealing quality that Alex does, partly because of the charismatic actors surrounding him, like Sir Ralph Richardson, and the beautiful and sensual Helen Mirren.
The overlapping cast makes a fascinating story in itself. Unlike any other film I can think of, Anderson casts a number of his actors in multiple roles, creating a very powerful sense of déjà vu for Mick as well as the audience. The construction of the film is circular, not in a single circle but repeatedly cycling through experience after experience, many of them with the same people in different guises, almost like a microcosm of reincarnation. ("Around the world in circles turning / earning what we can while others dance away / the chance to light your day," sings Price.) So Arthur Lowe will play Mr. Duff at Imperial Coffee, and then the Rabelaisian hotel manager Charlie Johnson, and then the African dignitary Dr. Munda in blackface, and the great actress Rachel Roberts will cycle, and Ralph Richardson, and so will many of the other actors.
At least two who cycle through Mick's life in O Lucky Man! are also actors in A Clockwork Orange, where Philip Stone plays Alex' timid and querulous father, and Warren Clarke memorably plays Alex' hulking droog Dim. The resonance of having the same actors playing parts in the two movies creates another level of meaning when seen together. Philip Stone plays one of the torturer/interrogators on the British military base, and the juxtaposition of their institutional brutality is powerfully contrasted with the bland English "civilization" of the tea lady with the cart, who interrupts their questioning and then sets Mick free after the sirens start wailing. Warren Clarke plays the "pig boy," Mick's fellow inmate at Professor Millar's strange clinic - and Mick also sees him at the film's end, handing out fliers in Piccadilly Circus for an open casting call Lindsay Anderson is holding for his new film O Lucky Man! McDowell and Clarke pause and look at each other, Mick thinking that he has seen him somewhere before, while the audience considers that, not only have these two characters seen each other in this film, but damn! I think I've seen them before too, in a different context altogether.
Certain scenes are similar as well. I don't know whether Anderson was able to see Kubrick's completed film while he was still working on his, but Mick's escape from the Millar clinic is virtually frame-for-frame with Alex's suicide attempt in the writer's loft. In both scenes they crash through an upper storey plate glass window. Another parallel scene involves Mick and Alex both being set-upon by crowds of down-and-out old homeless people, but the motivation behind the attacks is different for each character: revenge for Alex' past brutality vs. the anger of the meths drinkers towards Mick's pious, do-gooding platitudes. Juxtaposed, we see the irony: the boys are equally set-upon, whether for good or evil.
Both movies end with a smile, though again the cause and effect are different. Alex has been "cured at last" - a gigantic stereo blaring Beethoven has been rolled into his hospital room, and glad-handing politicians are jockeying for position to be photographed with him. It is all extremely cynical. Meanwhile, the director Anderson is demanding a smile from Travis at the casting call. "What's there to smile about?" asks the long-suffering Mick. Pow! Lindsay Anderson clocks him across the face with the movie script. Slowly, knowledge and understanding breaks out with his smile. What's there to smile about? Mick is alive, and after all he's been through he's lucky to be alive. ("If you've got the secret then try not to blow it/Stay a Lucky Man," sings Price.) His smile is the opposite of cynical - it is the smile of understanding, and the fans of these two great movies are happy to share it with this fine young actor.
A Clockwork Orange was released in 1971, and O Lucky Man! came out in 1973. These films are two of the finest of their time, and I am confident that they will be enjoyed by audiences for many years to come.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Clockwork Orange
Comment: This is, without a doubt, one of the most brilliant narratives in film history because it becomes clear that Malcolm McDowell's flippant, arrogant, insouciant anti-hero triumphs over society's best intentions at engineering compliance, and we agree, somewhat guiltily, with his point of view, albeit violent and horrifying. Viewers would do well to understand the symbolism of the number 4. The 4th movement of Beethoven's 9th plays throughout the film, but there are four acts of violence that he and his gang commit, four acts of violence committed against his person, four figures on the cathedral, four members of the gang (resembling the four riders of the Apocalypse?), and when he goes to prison, the number four is conspicuously missing form his prison ID, thus he is losing his "4" identity. And, of course, the four seasons are the "work" of the clock, or time passing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Clockwork still looks sharper than ever
Comment: This all new 2007 Digital Transfer of "Clockwork" is must for any fan of this film or films of Stanley Kubrick.
Colors are rich and the new transfer is crystal clear. After seeing so many grainy and faded versions throughout the years, it's great to see this film they way it should have looked like. Sound is quite a enhancement as well. As any fan of this film music is the utmost important factor too. So much classical music is played especially Beethoven.
The special features are extremely informative as well. Many of the features give a detailed history of the film and why it was banned in England for so many years. Now folks in the UK can see "Clockwork" in prestine condition. Malcom McDowell specials are very entertaining but a little too long. My only little gripe!
Must get this to add to any classic film collection!!
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Editorial Reviews:
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Stanley Kubrick's striking visual interpretation of Anthony Burgess's famous novel is a masterpiece. Malcolm McDowell delivers a clever, tongue-in-cheek performance as Alex, the leader of a quartet of droogs, a vicious group of young hoodlums who spend their nights stealing cars, fighting rival gangs, breaking into people's homes, and raping women. While other directors would simply exploit the violent elements of such a film without subtext, Kubrick maintains Burgess's dark, satirical social commentary. We watch Alex transform from a free-roaming miscreant into a convict used in a government experiment that attempts to reform criminals through an unorthodox new medical treatment. The catch, of course, is that this therapy may be nothing better than a quick cure-all for a society plagued by rampant crime. A Clockwork Orange works on many levels--visual, social, political, and sexual--and is one of the few films that hold up under repeated viewings. Kubrick not only presents colorfully arresting images, he also stylizes the film by utilizing classical music (and Wendy Carlos's electronic classical work) to underscore the violent scenes, which even today are disturbing in their display of sheer nihilism. Ironically, many fans of the film have missed that point, sadly being entertained by its brutality rather than being repulsed by it. --Bryan Reesman
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