A Clockwork Orange - Stanley Kubrick Malcolm McDowell Opening sequence une vid�...

The film opens with Alex & his droogs drinking at the Korova Milk Bar for purposes of (in the words of Alex’s voice-over narration) “sharpening up their minds” with Narcotic-spiked milk for “the old ultraviolence”. After leaving they ridicule & beat an elderly vagrant under a motorway flyover at night. They then get into a gang brawl with a rival gang led by Billy Boy, but leave when they hear the police coming. Then follows a high speed country night-drive with a stolen car. They gain entry into the house of a writer through a deceptive ruse claiming that they need to use the phone to call an ambulance. They assault the writer & rape his wife while Alex sings "Singing in the Rain". After getting rid of the car, they return to Korova milk bar. At a different table are some well-dressed guests including a woman who starts singing the melody of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Dim expresses his dislike of this music by making a rude noise, whereupon Alex immediately hits Dim sharply with his cane. Being very fond of classical music, Alex finds Dim’s attitude disrespectful. When Alex returns to his own home, he puts on a cassette tape of Beethoven’s "Ninth symphony". This is accompanied by a fantasy montage of violent images. Alex’s mother attempts to wake him up, but Alex claims that he is too sick to go to school. He gets a visit from a social worker, Mr. Deltoid, who suspects Alex has been up to “some nastiness”. Alex then goes to a music shop & picks up two young women. When Alex later that day meets up with his Droogs, they express displeasure with his leadership stating they want to run things differently according to a “new way” that entails more ambitious crime & “no more picking on Dim”. While they are walking by a canal, Alex without warning suddenly attacks the other Droogs in a move to reestablish his leadership. The Droogs' next job is to burgle the home of a woman who runs a health farm & owns an enormous number of cats & suggestive works of art. Alex & the “cat lady” get into a fight which results in Alex’s mortally wounding her with a large penis statue. When Alex exits the house, his fellow Droogs attack him, the police arrive, & Alex is arrested. He is visited in the interrogation room by Mr. Deltoid, who tells him he is “now a murderer”after the 'cat lady" dies in the hospital. Arriving at the jail, Alex is processed & assigned the number #655321. In jail, he develops a relationship with the prison chaplain, a kindly soul who preaches to the prisoners about hellfire & damnation. Alex begins studying the Bible, but largely identifies with the violent characters in it, including a soldier who whips Jesus. Alex discovers about a new experimental medical procedure called the Ludovico technique an experimental aversion therapy for rehabilitating criminals. When the Minister of the Interior visits the prison looking for potential candidates for this treatment, Alex presents himself as a possible candidate for it. Alex is chosen & reports to the Ludivico facility. He is made to wear a straitjacket & watch films containing extreme scenes of violence while being given drugs to induce reactions of revulsion & regurgitation. At one point, Alex notes that the soundtrack on one film is music by Beethoven. He shrieks in agony realizing that he will now have similar feelings of revulsion towards Beethoven’s music. He yells out “I’m cured, praise God” hoping to have the treatment prematurely terminated. When the treatment is concluded, a demonstration of the technique’s effects is given to an audience that includes the prime minister & one of the prison guards. In this demonstration, an actor gratuitously insults & then picks a fight with Alex, & Alex is unable to fight back. The other man forces Alex to lick his boot. This is followed by the appearance of a nude woman who stands in front of Alex. Alex gets up & attempts to reach for her breasts but “the sickness” suddenly floods over him & he is unable to continue any interaction with her. At the end of this demonstration the Minister of the Interior declares that Alex is now a “true Christian” over the prison chaplain’s protests that Alex has no free choice. Alex returns home hoping for a reunion with his parents, but they have taken on a new lodger who now lives in his room whom they decline to evict, leaving Alex to fend for himself. Alex wanders the streets, & runs into the tramp that he & his droogs beat up at the beginning of the film. The tramp summons several of his friends all of whom now assault Alex, who is of course unable to fight back. Two police arrive to break up the brawl, but they turn out to be two of Alex’s old droogs who now work for the police. They continue to bear a grudge against him & take him out to the country & savagely beat him, then abandoning him. Alex, now in very bad shape, stumbles on the country house of the writer whose wife he had raped two years earlier. The writer, Mr. Alexander, does not at first recognize Alex as his wife’s rapist, as Alex had been masked at the time. But Mr. Alexander does recognize Alex as the young lad in the news who had been subjected to the Ludovico technique. Mr. Alexander takes Alex in. However, the writer does not realize who Alex is until he hears him singing the song “Singin’ in the Rain” in the bathtub, as Alex had also sung this song when raping the writer’s wife. Mr. Alexander first drugs Alex & then locks him in a room on the upper story of a house, while blasting the music of Beethoven’s Ninth at full volume from a stereo on the floor below. Mr. Alexander knows that Alex will have a revulsion reaction to this from the side-effect of the Ludivico technique, & as Mr. Alexander predicts, Alex jumps out of the third-story window of the house. The action now cuts to Alex in traction at a hospital. When he awakes, he is given a psychological test of a slide show of pictures. He is asked to say what he thinks the characters are saying. His answers are typically violent. Alex reports having had dreams about doctors messing around inside his “gulliver” (head). Alex is now visited by the prime minister who tells him how much he regrets subjecting Alex to the Ludovico treatment, & reassures him that the state will look after him from hereon, & that the writer, Mr. Alexander, has been arrested. Alex is also told he will be granted an important government job. As a token of good will, the prime minister has wheeled into Alex’s room a large stereo system playing Beethoven’s Ninth. Alex realizes that he is having no aversion reactions. He briefly has a fantasy of him having sex with a naked woman while Victorian age figures look on applauding. The film closes with his words “I was cured all right”. The closing credits are accompanied by Gene Kelly’s rendition of “Singin’ in the Rain”. Themes Morality One of the film's central moral questions – as well as in many of Burgess's other books – is the definition of "goodness". After aversion therapy, Alex behaves like a good member of society, but not by choice; his "goodness" is involuntary & mechanical, like that of the titular clockwork orange. In prison, the chaplain criticises the Ludovico Technique, saying that true goodness must come from within. Another theme is the abuse of one's liberties – both by Alex & by those using him for their various ends. The film is also critical of both parties using Alex as a tool to those ends: Frank Alexander, writer & victim of Alex & the droogs, not only wants revenge over Alex, but sees him as a means to definitively turn the people against the government & its new regime – Mr. Alexander is afraid of this new government. Speaking on the phone, he says: …Recruiting brutal young roughs into the police; proposing debilitating & will-sapping techniques of conditioning. Oh, we’ve seen it all before in other countries; the thin end of the wedge! Before we know where we are, we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism. On the other side, the Minister of the Interior, representing the government, puts Mr. Alexander away, using the excuse of him being a danger to Alex. Whether he has been harmed o. not remains unclear, but from what the Minister tells Alex, it is obvious that the author has been denied his ability to write and, more importantly, to produce "subversive" material, critical of the current government & prone to cause unrest. This page uses content from the movies page on the English version of Wikipedia & is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Wildscreen.tv disclaims any & all warranties as to the accuracy o. reliability of the content. Permission is granted to copy, distribute &/or modify the biographical information on this page under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 o. any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.