A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971): David Lean Cinema, 2pm
This is a rare 35mm presentation.
Time Out review:
Swap Beethoven for heroin, and Stanley Kubrick’s scandalous 1971
Moog-mare based on Anthony Burgess’s novel might work as a forerunner to
‘Trainspotting’. It presents the wayward travails of Little Alex
(Malcolm McDowell) a tearaway who likes nothing more than a bit of the
old ultra violence. But after a bungled break-in where he is abandoned
by his band of cock-nosed droogs, he is packed off to a hospital to be
‘cured’. The style of filmmaking is at once clinically precise and
imaginatively loose. This is down to the multitude of tricks that
Kubrick hoists in (slo-mo, fast-forward, cartoon inserts, back
projection) to encapsulate the total autonomy these characters have and
why they see their behaviour as thrilling. The violence is plentiful and
invites a mixture of revulsion and amusement, not least because it is
usually overlaid by Walter Carlos’s mad reinterpretations of classical
standards. Does it stand up psychologically? Probably not. But as an
example of a work in which the filmmaking style matches the tone of the
material, it’s peerless.
David Jenkins
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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