Why the hell was it called Clockwork Orange?
Is it really as scary as they say or is it just plain wierd like all my friends tell me?
I want to watch it but don’t know… if it is two hours of boredom I’d rather not…
It’s pretty weird. I had to watch it a few times to really understand what was going on, but it was worth it. It’s a great movie. I wouldn’t say that it’s scary in a traditional sense, but some of the ideas presented are frightening. It presents some disturbing observations of human nature.
“A Clockwork Orange”. Why is it named like that?
It’s been mentioned in plenty of other threads too if you want to run a search.
Not as freaky as everybody was making it out to be. Maybe that was what passed for scary/messed up back when it came out but it seems pretty tame now.
Still pretty interesting though, not a no-brainer movie.
I don’t think it is tame by today’s standards. What movies are you comparing it to, Azael?
I had friends who wouldn’t talk to me for 3 months after watching it on my reccomendation.
The way I used to describe it when I worked at blockbuster, is that it starts out with a gang of young hooligans beating a drunken bum to within an inch of his life, and that’s the most socially redeeming point in the whole movie. The rest of it is a long continuious downward spiral into the depths of human depravity.
I agree with erislover. A movie where a woman gets blugened to death by an 4 foot long ceramic phallus counts as disturbing even to this day.
That’s true. Nowadays nobody finds teenagers who drink hallucinogen-laced milk, invade homes, and rape and murder the least bit disturbing. Disney even had that long-running “Hey Droogies!” cartoon series.
Baldwin, you rock!
The movie A Clockwork Orange was fairly close to the Anthony Burgess novel of the same name that it was based on. The novel came out in 1962 and the movie came out in 1971. They were both a little shocking, I suppose, but not enough that they caused riots or anything. (I remember the movie coming out, but the novel came out when I was a child.) I think you overestimate the innocence of past times. I think that it’s possible that more people might be shocked by the film if it had come out this year than in 1971.
I wonder what it would be like to watch the movie like Alex watched those movies in the movie…
[[rereads sentence… well, it makes sense…]]
Actually, it did inspire copycats in the UK. Kubrick was so upset that he refused to allow the film to be shown any more in the UK.
The movie was based on the US edition of the book, which didn’t include the crucial last chapter in which Alex decides to grow up. As a result, the movie has a totally different message than the book. Even worse is that Burgess wrote the novel as a warning of Communism, which he saw as a danger to Britain, Kubrick ignored that and tried to make the plot mean something different.
UnuMondo
just rent the movie and watch it…if it bores you , you may press stop and promptly return it…i promise i’m not being an ass, it just irks me when someone asks a question such as this when a matter of a few bucks is involved and very little time…
Unumodo writes:
> The movie was based on the US edition of the book, which
> didn’t include the crucial last chapter in which Alex decides to
> grow up. As a result, the movie has a totally different message
> than the book. Even worse is that Burgess wrote the novel as
> a warning of Communism, which he saw as a danger to Britain,
> Kubrick ignored that and tried to make the plot mean
> something different.
Kubrick had, of course, looked at both the UK and the US edition of the book, and he chose to use the American edition without the final chapter. As to whether the movie and the book had a different message, well, that’s the beginning of a long debate, and I’m not interested in getting into it.
For what it’s worth, when I was an assistant manager at the local video store, Clockwork Orange was one of a handfull of titles that someone could bring back for an exchange, no questions asked.
I didn’t think the book, or the movie was all that shocking, however, have you checked out another of Malcolm Mcdowals movie…Caligula?
Now that is shocking!
yeah, i could see why some would want to take it back…i just don’t understand why it’s even thought about twice…see it,don’t see it…it’s only a couple hours and a bit of money, you may like it…
I think the ‘last chapter’ was added sometime after the original publication and was something that Burgess had cut from the original because he thought it cheapened the book.
My opinion? it’s a great book and a great movie. It’s supposed to be disturbing and shocking, but the whole point was that what the government did to Alex was more disturbing, more shocking, more evil than the terrible violence in which he engaged.
[rant] Free will, volition, the ability to choose, whatever you want to call it, that’s what Burgess exalts as the most important, the most inalienable of our rights, of our selves, as the thing that makes us human. (He’s not alone, either, look at the garden of eden story and the choosing of the apple.) To take that away from someone, as they do to Alex, is to make him an organic machine, a clockwork orange.
[/rant]
Back to the OP–yes, it’s a pretty violent, graphic movie, but I can think of several I’ve seen that were a lot more upsetting to me personally: “The Cook, The Thief” and “Eraserhead” are two which I frequently warn people about. The ‘scary’ part of “A Clockwork Orange” was not the violence but the prospect of a totalitarian society and the erosion of individual freedoms.
$.02
No, Pablito, I have an edition of “The Clockwork Orange” published sometime after the movie, and Burgess’ foreword clearly states that Chapter 21 was a vital part of the work. I am trying to recall from memory something I haven’t read in years, but he said Chapter 21 is important because it is supposed to show that growing up and being a productive adult is (ultimately) more satisfying and useful to society than being a destructive juvenile. He goes into great detail about why he wrote Chapter 21
Burgess said the American publishers cut Chapter 21 when it was published in the U.S. because they felt it wasn’t “realistic” enough, and Kubrick based the movie on the American version of the book. He then added the sly comment “Americans were about to get their own dose of realism in Vietnam.”
Regardless, it’s a helluva book and a helluva movie.