A Clockwork Orange year

[PSXer]

List of stories set in a future now in the past

this webiste says the movie takes place in 1995

I’ve seen the movie alot and don’t know any refernece to year or anything in it

where do they get this date??

[Ethilrist]

Probably from IMDB, or the Anthony Burgess book it was based off of.

[Ethilrist]

From the IMDB FAQ entry:

Alex mentions that his car is a “Derango '95”, Therefore setting the movie around 1995 or later

but

However, a newspaper later in the film, after the suicide sequence, has what appears to be a deliberately blurred date reading something like “1972”.

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

At least in my edition of the book it’s “Durango 95,” with no apostrophe. That number could be a model name, not necessarily a year.

[FriarTed]

When I first saw the movie in 1982 (college abnormal psych class), I also thought the Durango 95 car was a reference to the year. Reading the book & seeing that also there made me reconsider, tho it doesn’t negate the possibility.

[Sicks_Ate]

Slightly off-topic, when the crew is pictured in the Durango 95 is it an existing make/model or just a mock-up?

[FrankJBN]

Two contrasting notes:

I don’t drive a Ford 83, I drive an 83 Ford.

But I’m an American.

In British singer-songwriter Richard Thompson’s ode to the Vincent Black Lightning motorcycle, he sings of his Vincent 52.

[Elmer_J.Fudd]

The car used in the film was a 1969 M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16.

[Labdad]

When the movie came out in 1972, you could drive a BMW 2002. It hadn’t been sent from 30 years in the future!

[phungi]

IMDB “memorable quotes” returns:

The Durango '95 purred away a real horrowshow - a nice, warm vibraty feeling all through your guttiwuts. And soon it was trees and dark, my brothers, with real country dark.

Anyone who read the book knows that deciphering the language, even with Burgess’ glossary of terms, is quite a challenge!

[Mavic_Chen]

@Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew

At least in my edition of the book it’s “Durango 95,” with no apostrophe. That number could be a model name, not necessarily a year.

My feeling was that it referred to a model type rather than a year of production, but it works either way.

@Elmer_J.Fudd

The car used in the film was a 1969 M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16.

I didn’t know it was a real car, thanks for the information.

[Voyager]

I’ll have to check, but I think the drunk they beat up was muttering something about people on the moon, and I definitely got the impression that they were on some sort of moon colony. Clockwork Orange and 2001 can co-exist. (And yes I know about the 2001 album in the record store Alex visits.)

[Mavic_Chen]

For what it’s worth, I just dug out my 1996 paperback and it has an introduction by Blake Morrison which states in part:

“Burgess called this language nadsat, a transliteration of the Russian suffix for ‘teen’, and imagined that at the time and place the events in the novel occur (somewhere in Europe, circa 1972), it had become part of the culture, or sub-culture.”

Edited to add: The novel is copyright 1962 and the film 1971 so 1972 was slightly futuristic I guess!

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

“Burgess called this language nadsat, a transliteration of the Russian suffix for ‘teen’, and imagined that at the time and place the events in the novel occur (somewhere in Europe, circa 1972), it had become part of the culture, or sub-culture.”

There can’t be much doubt that the novel takes place in England. For one thing, what Nadsat lingo isn’t derived from Russian is mostly derived from Cockney slang. I’ve always understood that Burgess intended the story to take place in a fairly imminent future; I think one decade in the future seems more appropriate than more than three.

[Arkcon]

Notice, how Alek muses fondly on the ride of a Durango, number 95 (sorry Rob Zombie quote helps me remember the year.) The car is a classic, so the story and movie may be set 20-30 years in the future.

[Dung_Beetle]

I always figured it was an alternate universe, right next door to our own.