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A Clockwork Orange (1971)
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 dystopian crime film written, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is based on Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel. The film employs disturbing and violent themes to comment on psychiatry, juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and broader social, political, and economic issues in a dystopian near-future Britain.
Directed by Stanley Kubrick · Shot by John Alcott · Cut by Bill Butler · Music by Wendy Carlos · Ratio 1.66:1 · 136 min
How it was made
- Malcolm McDowell scratched a cornea and was temporarily blinded during filming of the Ludovico-technique scene; a real physician stood beside him in shot, dripping saline into his forced-open eyes.
- The point-of-view shot of Alex's suicide leap was achieved by dropping a Newman-Sinclair clockwork camera, lens-first, in a box from the third storey of the Corus Hotel; the camera survived six takes.
- McDowell cracked ribs while filming the humiliation stage-show sequence.
- McDowell showed Kubrick his own cricket whites to help design Alex's gang uniform, and Kubrick had him wear the box, a jockstrap, over the costume rather than underneath.
- Wendy Carlos specially arranged an electronic version of the scherzo from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for the soundtrack, alongside an electronic arrangement of Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Stanley Kubrick
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