Clockwork Orange

Clockwork Orange This film glorifies rape and violence; it shows a brutally violent offender and then wants you to sympathise with him for the 2nd half of the film! It also features 2...not 1 extended rape scenes of woman being mishandled and sexually assaulted by men, it had that bizarre sped up sex scene... which was unheard of back then. It has a ton of female nudity, full frontal.... it has some shocking commentary on youth violence and a disturbing view of futuristic London. back then, this film was mind blowingly controversial. The British authorities considered the sexual violence extreme, furthermore, there occurred legal claims that the movie A Clockwork Orange had inspired true copycat behaviour, as per press cuttings at the British Film Institute. In March 1972, at trial, the prosecutor accusing the fourteen-year-old-boy defendant of the manslaughter of a classmate, referred to A Clockwork Orange, telling the judge that the case had a macabre relevance to the film. The attacker, a Bletchley boy of sixteen, pleaded guilty after telling police that friends had told him of the film “and the beating up of an old boy like this one”; defence counsel told the trial “the link between this crime and sensational literature, particularly A Clockwork Orange, is established beyond reasonable doubt”. The press also blamed the film for a rape in which the attackers sang “Singin' in the Rain”. Subsequently, Kubrick asked Warner Brothers to withdraw the film from British distribution. Popular belief was that those copycat attacks led Kubrick to withdraw the film from distribution in the United Kingdom, however, in a television documentary, made after his death, widow Christiane confirmed rumours that he withdrew A Clockwork Orange on police advice, after threats against him and family (the source of those threats are undiscussed). That Warner Bros. acceded to his withdrawal request indicates the good business relations the director had with the studio, especially the executive Terry Semel. The ban was vigorously pursued in Kubrick’s lifetime. One art house cinema that defied the ban in 1993, and was sued and lost, is the Scala cinema at Kings Cross, London; the same premises of present-day Scala nightclub. Unable to meet the cost of the defence, the cinema club was forced into receivership. Whatever the reason for the film's withdrawal, for some 27 years, it was difficult to see the film in the United Kingdom. It reappeared in cinemas, and the first VHS and DVD releases followed soon after Kubrick’s death. On 4 July 2001, the uncut A Clockwork Orange, had its premiere broadcast on Sky TV’s Sky Box Office; the run was until mid-September. Contrary to popular belief, A Clockwork Orange was never banned in the UK. The BBFC classified it as an X-rating in 1971. When first released, many people in Britain were disgusted by the film as the sexual violence was considered to be extreme. Throughout 1972 and 1973, several violent crimes in Britain were said to be influenced by the film. These included an old man beaten to death in an underpass, a sixteen year old boy wearing Alex's uniform beating up a younger boy and a young woman raped by men chanting 'Singing in the Rain'. With pressure on director Stanley Kubrick to ban the film, Kubrick withdrew A Clockwork Orange from British cinemas in 1973. He said that the film would only be allowed to be seen after his death. During the 1980's and 1990's, the only way in which British fans could see the film was if they ordered it on VHS from other countries, usually France. In 1993, the Scala Cinema club in London screened the film without Kubrick's permission. At Kubrick's insistence, Warner Bros sued the Scala club causing them to become bankrupt and eventually close. Stanley Kubrick died in 1999 and the movie was re-classified with an 18-rating by the BBFC. A Clockwork Orange was eventually re-released in British cinemas in 2000 and released on VHS and DVD in the UK later that year. ‘We all suffer from the popular desire to make the known notorious. 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 until I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation.’ –This is from Anthony burgess on his views of the Film adaptation of Clockwork Orange