A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

FRIDAY 29 SEPTEMBER AT 9:30PM

Country USA/UK Running Time 136 mins Format 35mm Director/Screenplay/ Producer Stanley Kubrick Director of Photography John Alcott Cast Malcolm McDowell Patrick Magee Michael Bates Email crishi.jayawardena@warnerbros.com Website www.warnerbros.com

Stanley Kubrick's brilliantly stylised interpretation of Anthony Burgess's classic novel begins as simply and as elegantly as anyone could expect from a cinematic genius. The close up of Alex De Large’s scheming face, accompanied by dooming moog atmospherics, immediately hurls the viewer into an unknown, unchartered world of chaos and forbidden delights. Malcolm McDowell delivers a clever, tongue-in-cheek performance as the very likeable Alex De Large, the leader of a quartet of vicious droogs who spend their nights wreaking havoc on a society which condemns their immoral and reprehensible behaviour. After incarceration and having been subjected to the Ludovico treatment, the latest in human reconditioning, Alex is denied freedom of choice and is left vulnerable at the hands of all those he has wronged in the past. Without the freedom to make choices between right and wrong, Alex becomes a dehumanised machine programmed to operate without contest within Authority’s vision of utopia.

Often criticised for glamorising violence, Kubrick merely uses Alex as a living manifestation of humankind’s natural desire to be free of inhibitions. This is evident in Kubrick’s choice to use Burgess’s American ending over the optimistic British version, in which Alex concedes to society’s demand for conformity. Unjustly denied the best film Oscar in 1971, this film is perhaps the most exemplary of Kubrick’s genius and certainly the darkest of his masterworks. No other film has, or ever will, feel or look like this one.   JV

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