A Clockwork Orange Research
Release date:
19 December 1971 (US), re release 2nd February 1972
13th January 1972 (UK) re release 17th March 2000
“During the sixty-one weeks that it played to the British public, it preoccupied the attention of politicians, the media, the church, the so-called protectors of morality as well as the youth, police and local authorities of towns up and down the country before its director, Stanley Kubrick, in the face of this pressure finally banned the film from public exhibition.”
Responses to ‘A Clockwork orange
A Clockwork Orange inspired a variety of responses from different members of British society. John Trevelyan, Chairman of The British Board of Film Classification (1956-71), who passed the film with an "X" certificate said it was "...an important social document of outstanding brilliance and quality".
On the other hand according to the spokesperson of the so-called "silent moral majority", Mary Whitehouse, it was "sickening and disgusting...I had to come out after twenty minutes". To MPs such as Maurice Edelman, A Clockwork Orange was an incitement to violent crime -- "...the adventures of the psychotic Alex rampaging to music, are likely to have a more sinister effect on those who see for the first time see a fantasy realised on the screen. -- a fantasy of exciting violence." But for the young themselves it was "a subversive tribute to the glory of youth"
“The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d’esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation.” — Anthony Burgess on A Clockwork Orange (from A Flame Into Being: The Life and Works of D.H. Lawrence)
This reaction was said to be because Kubrick had missed the point of the film; redemption. Burgess’ original American publisher didn’t include the final chapter of the book, despite Burgess’ protests. Burgess admits that he needed the money and eventually caved to the publisher’s wishes. All other original editions of the book included the final chapter, but Kubrick based his film on the American version.
So what Kubrick released to the public was a depressing story of violence with a bitter, cynical ending. Essentially, the film said humans can’t change, but in Burgess’ version, Alex’s story ends on a positive note.
In 1986, an updated version of A Clockwork Orange was released, presumably one Burgess was satisfied with, that featured an introduction from Burgess explaining the final chapter’s original omission. He says:
“The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. The American or Kubrickian Orange is a fable; the British or world one is a novel.”
http://101books.net/2011/09/01/did-stanley-kubrick-misinterpret-a-clockwork-orange/
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0012.html
Release date:
19 December 1971 (US), re release 2nd February 1972
13th January 1972 (UK) re release 17th March 2000
“During the sixty-one weeks that it played to the British public, it preoccupied the attention of politicians, the media, the church, the so-called protectors of morality as well as the youth, police and local authorities of towns up and down the country before its director, Stanley Kubrick, in the face of this pressure finally banned the film from public exhibition.”
Responses to ‘A Clockwork orange
A Clockwork Orange inspired a variety of responses from different members of British society. John Trevelyan, Chairman of The British Board of Film Classification (1956-71), who passed the film with an "X" certificate said it was "...an important social document of outstanding brilliance and quality".
On the other hand according to the spokesperson of the so-called "silent moral majority", Mary Whitehouse, it was "sickening and disgusting...I had to come out after twenty minutes". To MPs such as Maurice Edelman, A Clockwork Orange was an incitement to violent crime -- "...the adventures of the psychotic Alex rampaging to music, are likely to have a more sinister effect on those who see for the first time see a fantasy realised on the screen. -- a fantasy of exciting violence." But for the young themselves it was "a subversive tribute to the glory of youth"
“The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d’esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation.” — Anthony Burgess on A Clockwork Orange (from A Flame Into Being: The Life and Works of D.H. Lawrence)
This reaction was said to be because Kubrick had missed the point of the film; redemption. Burgess’ original American publisher didn’t include the final chapter of the book, despite Burgess’ protests. Burgess admits that he needed the money and eventually caved to the publisher’s wishes. All other original editions of the book included the final chapter, but Kubrick based his film on the American version.
So what Kubrick released to the public was a depressing story of violence with a bitter, cynical ending. Essentially, the film said humans can’t change, but in Burgess’ version, Alex’s story ends on a positive note.
In 1986, an updated version of A Clockwork Orange was released, presumably one Burgess was satisfied with, that featured an introduction from Burgess explaining the final chapter’s original omission. He says:
“The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. The American or Kubrickian Orange is a fable; the British or world one is a novel.”
http://101books.net/2011/09/01/did-stanley-kubrick-misinterpret-a-clockwork-orange/
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0012.html
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