A Clockwork Orange (1971) on Netflix
In a near-future Britain, teenage Alex DeLarge leads his droogs on nights of violence, and he loves Beethoven. Jailed, he volunteers for the government's experimental aversion therapy.
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- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Alex DeLarge leads his droogs, among them Georgie, Dim and Pete. Their evenings run to robbery, beating and rape, and Alex, who loves the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, keeps his authority over the others by force. The authorities know him as a delinquent but have yet to catch him at his crimes, and his probation officer, P. R. Deltoid, warns him. The droogs want a share of higher-yield thefts, which Alex refuses. The Minister of the Interior offers prisoners the chance to enter the Ludovico technique, a conditioning treatment meant to reform a criminal within two weeks, and Alex puts himself forward.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While filming the Ludovico technique scene, Malcolm McDowell scratched a cornea and was temporarily blinded; the doctor dropping saline solution into Alex's forced-open eyes on screen was a real physician there to stop the actor's eyes from drying. McDowell also cracked ribs filming the humiliation stage show.
- It was difficult to see A Clockwork Orange in the United Kingdom for 27 years, and only after Stanley Kubrick died in 1999 was it re-released theatrically, on VHS and on DVD.
- The song 'Singing in the Rain', which Alex sings while attacking F. Alexander's wife, was an improvisation by Malcolm McDowell and is not in the book; he picked it on the fifth day of filming the scene, after Kubrick complained the rape scene was too "stiff", because it was the only song he half knew the lyrics to.
SPOILER
For the shot of Alex jumping from a window in a suicide attempt, the team dropped a Newman-Sinclair clockwork camera in a box, lens-first, from the third story of the Corus Hotel, and to Kubrick's surprise the camera survived six takes.- Anthony Burgess was in no way involved in the production of the film of his novel, and the only profit he made directly from it was the initial $500 he had been given for the rights to the adaptation.
- According to 225 Magazine, screenwriter Terry Southern wrote a first script for A Clockwork Orange with the Beatles specifically in mind, and in February 1968 executive producer Si Litvinoff sent prospective director John Schlesinger a petition signed by Mick Jagger and all four Beatles asking that Jagger play Alex and the Beatles compose the soundtrack.
- Brazil's military dictatorship banned A Clockwork Orange until 1978, when it finally reached cinemas in a version with black dots covering the actors' genitals and breasts in the nude scenes.
- Stanley Kubrick wanted to use the Pink Floyd song "Atom Heart Mother" on the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange, but the band refused.
