A Clockwork Orange film description. A Clockwork Orange (film)

Practical lesson No. 2. Genre varieties of odes in the works of M. V. Lomonosov Literature: 1) Lomonosov M. V. Odes 1739, 1747, 1748. “Conversation with Anacreon” “Poems composed on the road to Peterhof...”. “In the darkness of the night...” “Morning reflection on God’s majesty” “Evening

Practical lesson No. 4. The poetics of D. I. Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor” Literature: 1) Fonvizin D. I. The Minor // Fonvizin D. I. Collection. Op.: In 2 vols. M.; L., 1959. T. 1.2) Makogonenko G.P. From Fonvizin to Pushkin. M., 1969. P. 336-367.3) Berkov P. N. History of Russian comedy of the 18th century. L., 1977. Ch. 8 (§ 3).4)

Practical lesson No. 5 “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” A. N. Radishchev Literature: 1) Radishchev A. N. Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow // Radishchev A. N. Works. M., 1988.2) Kulakova L.I., Zapadav V.A.A.N. Radishchev. "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow." A comment. L., 1974.3)

Topic 2 “What, in essence, is the plague?”: chronicle novel “The Plague” (1947) by Albert Camus (Practical lesson) PRACTICAL LESSON PLAN 1. Moral and philosophical code of A. Camus.2. Genre originality novel "The Plague". The genre of the chronicle novel and the parable beginning in the work.3. Story

Topic 3 Novels by Tadeusz Borowski and Zofia Nałkowska (Practical lesson) Poetics, capable of expressing the fundamental and deep meanings of existence, including “super-meanings” (K. Jaspers) of existential (actually human) existence in the world, is

Topic 5 Philosophical story-parable of Per Fabian Lagerkvist “Barabbas” (Practical lesson) Per Fabian Lagerkvist (P?r Fabian Lagerkvist, 1891–1974), a classic of Swedish literature, is known as a poet, author of short stories, dramatic and journalistic works that have become

Topic 12 Julian Barnes: variations on a theme of history (Practical lesson) The title of the work “A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters”, 1989, brought to the English writer Julian Barnes (Julian Barnes, b. 1946) world recognition, very unusual and ironic. It's like

Anthony Burgess A CLOCKWORK ORANGE Fragment 7I didn't believe my usham. It seemed like I was being kept in this filthy place for an eternity and would be kept for just as long. However, eternity fit entirely into two weeks, and finally they told me that these two weeks were ending: “Tomorrow, my friend,

I am naturally amazed at the phenomenal popularity of this book. Many readers unanimously speak about the incredible elaboration of the language and the richness of the novel with deep reflections on personal freedom, violence, good and evil. But I didn't see any of this in the book.

Take, for example, the Nadsat slang that the characters in the novel speak. In fact, it's just a simple replacement English words their Russian translation. That is, the author simply took a dictionary and methodically replaced every, for example, third word in the characters’ speech with its translation. I admit that the English-speaking reader, for the most part who did not know Russian then or now, will indeed be quite surprised. And I just found it funny. Even the word “nadsatiy” itself, denoting teenage hooligans, is an ordinary tracing from the English “teen”. Okay, Burgess knows how Russian numerals from eleven to nineteen end. I also know, what next?

Then, when Alex falls under a new “treatment” program, we are strongly urged to sympathize with the hero, whose psyche is supposedly hopelessly crippled. But excuse me, his mind is in perfect order. Hatred, anger and the desire for violence have not gone away. Despite acting like a righteous man, Alex remained a scumbag in his mind. He just can't overcome the physical pain, that's all. The humiliation at the demonstration in the clinic is nothing more than an illustration of the insignificance and weakness of his personality. In his new modus vivendi there is not an ounce of repentance and atonement, but there is not even a shadow of attitudes imposed from outside. Only a purely animal fear of physical suffering. He never stops thinking about violence and retribution for a minute, he is simply unable to overcome the pain. All the beatings he experienced do not atone for him; it is as pointless as beating a dog that bit you. The animal is not capable of reflection and awareness, which is why rabid dogs are shot. Yes, Alex experienced physical pain equal to the suffering of his victims. But he cannot experience mental pain, there is nothing to hurt.

At the end, after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, we are shown a new transformed hero. As if by magic, the bloodthirsty scumbag turned into a kind and compassionate man who dreams of a wife, son and happy family life. This doesn't happen. It can be assumed that the reason for everything is the mysterious course of hypnotherapy that Alex underwent while recovering from fractures. This is much more believable than a sudden, unconditional insight. Moreover, neither this new Alex nor his settled accomplice experience grief or suffering because of what they once did. It would be very interesting to see such a development of events: Alex meets a girl, falls in love, gets married, they have a son, everything is good and glorious. And suddenly one evening a gang of robbers breaks into their house, rapes his wife, kills his son, and severely beats him. But apparently this is too cool for Burgess’s sketchy work.

As a result, this is what happens: the course of therapy designed to change Alex turned out to be essentially useless, while something similar to real changes occurs for absolutely no reason. Neither the doctor from the hospital nor his own experience convinced the hero that violence was disgusting. In fact, Alex was a clockwork orange from the very beginning, existing only on primitive reflexes and carnal desires. The treatment only corrected those that clearly interfered with society. The hero’s personality did not suffer from this, because in essence it did not exist. People like Alex are only needed to work in mines or as cannon fodder in wars. Of course, the new government will also need a number of hand executioners to suppress the opposition. The rest are very convenient to train and put, for example, on a machine at a factory. In the brilliant “Equilibrium” by Kurt Wimmer or in the same “Brave New World” by Huxley, potentially full-fledged individuals were cruelly suppressed and tortured in the name of certain declared higher goals. This is the transformation of real living people into obedient mindless dummies who are so easy to control. And Burgess's is a pathetic parody, not even close to the things mentioned above. The notorious suffering of a hero is not worth even the suffering of an animal in a slaughterhouse. Because an animal is not guilty of anything, unlike a person who voluntarily descended to the level of a beast.

These are the pies.

Rating: 3

A teenager is always rebellious. He is looking for himself, and your home-grown morality and dull rules set limits for him that the teenager wants to overcome. My rebellion was reading literature +18

I bought A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess in my first year of law school, at 16 years old. I had a budget of 200 pocket rubles for the week and I paid 80 of them for a thin blue book with a half-fruit, half-clock mechanism. For some reason I thought about a bomb then. For some reason, the design of the book intrigued me so much that I decided to limit all my needs, but I definitely need to buy this volume. Let us clarify that I met the film adaptation later, and the film did not influence the visualization of the text in any way.

The book is not vile or disgusting. If you want to read something truly vile and disgusting, read the Criminal Code Russian Federation- a list of whorenesses that some people commit against others, and read it soulfully, get a grasp of the elements of the crimes.

A Clockwork Orange is a book of pain. At the core is the writer’s tragedy and this is the result of self-therapy, a person’s struggle for himself. And what it represents is a talentedly constructed composition of problems and plot moves, penetrating with a sharp needle into the very depths of the brain matter.

The answers to the question of teenage cruelty are clearly not in the realm of fiction. It is too multifaceted to fit into a little blue book, even with such a densely packed message to the audience. This is for sociologists, psychologists, and teachers.

A clockwork orange is just a reflection, a glimpse of life. Yes, yes, yes, ordinary life, from which sometimes each of us is protected and which we do not encounter, because because.

Alex is the “leader” of a gang of teenagers (you’ll understand why I blacked out his status a little later). He despises his own parents. He considers his father because he is a tireless hard worker, and his mother because of the limitations of her life activity, he considers them bourgeois and, in general, a social baseboard. He considers himself a person of a different kind. He has his own social circle, his own slang (which prevents many from instantly understanding what is happening), his own rules of behavior with others.

Alex is a conveyor belt of evil and cruelty: fights, robberies, beatings, racing on city streets, soft (and not so soft) drugs with milk (how touching, huh?), sex coupled with rape...

His accomplices do not lag behind him, they take him as an example.

I don't agree that the previous reviewer read the book carefully:

Alex has not improved at all. He hid. Like thousands of those who underwent prison reform, he returned to society and the author said goodbye to the character (and there are no heroes in this book) almost immediately, showing us (very symbolically) a very small period of time, but whether Alex was socialized or not is even not a question simply because there is no one to pose it to but yourself.

It’s also very strange that the review doesn’t mention what kind of violence Alex himself suffered. That they took away from him not just the opportunity to enjoy violence, but uprooted the ability to enjoy even the harmony of music - this was the last straw, and the starting point of his suicide attempt and the basis for the closure of the experimental correction program.

So it turns out that Alex ended up in a system of cruelty that has more resources than his gang, and he is just as raped as his victims. And he returned to a system where there is no “Alex’s gang” subsystem, but there is a “police” subsystem, in which one of Alex’s accomplices now serves (an old acquaintance did not fail to treat dear friend an excellent beating, which taught Alex one of his life lessons - not to renounce and not to be surprised).

What will his fate be?

The ending of the book is open like the gates of Buchenwald.

Why are teenagers cruel?

Simply because they can afford it.

Because we allow them to be like that.

Rating: 10

How difficult it is to write a review of a book that “hooked” you and caused a flurry of emotions in your soul. Every decade, acutely social novels appear that almost become the voice of their decade. For some, such a novel is “Fight Club,” for others, “The Catcher in the Rye.” For me, it's A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. And although this novel is already 52 years old, it is not outdated and is more relevant than ever now.

This story will be told by an adult, at one time one of the participants in teenage gangs. We travel back to 1962 and see the ruthless and dark world of London. A world in which there is nothing sacred left, a world where the streets are ruled by youth groups whose favorite pastimes are murder, violence, and robbery. THIS IS A WORLD WITHOUT RULES!

Alex, the leader of the youth group, and his three friends Pete, Georgik and Tem were very fond of nightlife. After all, it was at night that all the most interesting events in their lives. You could rob someone, beat someone up and think that you would go unpunished. And it always worked. It even worked when these four sneaked into the house of a married couple and, in full view of the husband, who had previously been brutally beaten, raped his wife. But you have to be responsible for everything in life. In one of their next adventures, our friends climb into the house of an old aristocrat intending to rob her. But she manages to call the police and our main character ends up in the clutches of the policemen, and his so-called friends fight. The one who always considered himself the smartest and most cunning ends up in prison. Two years in prison will be a very difficult test in his life and, just like in the situation with his friends, he will once again become a scapegoat. In one of the prison fights, a prisoner is killed, and all the arrows are pointed at Alex. And now he will have to become a victim of an experiment that kills a person’s tendency to violence. Released, he becomes an outcast in the world he once adored so much. The world has not changed, it is also cruel. Alex has changed. And now he faces the main task of how to survive in this chaos.

In conclusion, I want to say that A Clockwork Orange is one of those rare works that will remain relevant centuries later. Relevant as long as cruelty, heartlessness and greed remain in our world.

Rating: 10

It was the first time that the main character was so unpleasant to me. This is a very bold move, telling the story on behalf of such a bastard. However, let's not put labels on it.

Although no, you can’t do without kleinya here. If we continue to analyze the personality of the main acting character, it is not difficult to detect the fact that the author tried to make it as ambiguous as possible. Like, this is not pure evil. It also has good features.

So, what are these good traits that could make us forget all the packosti and fall in love with Alex?

The first is the so-called love of classical music. All the way, GG showed us his rare snobbery about his musical preferences. We all remember how he loves Mozart, Beethoven (especially the ninth) and despises all this pop kal. But excuse me, can this be considered a positive feature? After all, as I understand it, for him music is an additional catalyst for violence and intolerance, contempt for other people who have simpler tastes. Have you forgiven Alex yet? By the way, the author uses this same strange feature to make readers feel sorry for malchika. After all, after the operation, he can no longer listen to Ludwig Wang. What a pity…

The second is Alex's mental superiority over his koreshamy. But was she really there? Or did he just think so? Personally, I don't find anything kayfovogo about this. I don’t see this intellectuality at all. Karoche, past again. For me, GG is completely negative, without the slightest improvement.

And only at the end of the book does it become clear to us that Alex is finally on the path to correction. But will he go down this path? Or is this just a temporary depression and he will turn back? To make it clearer, I will rephrase the question. Can monstrous cruelty be justified by age? Are we all like this at this age? Do we all make the same mistakes? And when we get older, do we become good? That's it again?

Well, the main question that the author asked us. The one about free will. Is it possible to correct people using these methods? For me, after that they are no longer people at all, but just voniuchie oranges.

Overall, the novel is wonderful. And it is wonderful because it gives a lot of fresh food for the mind. Moreover, as they say nena vyazcivo. And of course, many thanks to the author for such an interesting yazick. I was amused that it was already there!

Rating: 6

All the outrages described in the book are shown to us through the eyes of a teenager from a street gang. And all the moral and ethical problems raised in the book break down about this concept. I understand - science fiction, a free genre, another example of an alternative future. But I don't trust this teenager. Alex is completely unreal. There is nothing of the street punks about him. It has an author - an educated, intelligent person who is trying to create an inner world that is completely alien to him. And the main character turns out to be some kind of doll. Yes, Alex's gang beats someone on the street, they break into the house, rape, commit outrages... Only these minor characters, suffering from juvenile delinquents, turned out to be much more real and alive for Burgess. And Alex is an intelligent boy trying to behave badly at the behest of his creator, truly a clockwork orange.

This fact terribly spoils the entire impression of the book. Burgess didn't have a negative protagonist, and nothing can be done about it.

Alex and co are as disgusting as people who kick other people can be. This is a tracing paper that we see on TV all the time today; it is too frivolous, if you like, not large-scale for a book. You expect more from the book. What do these guys have inside? How do they think and feel? The author could no longer describe this. Maybe because he didn’t know himself. Still, a person from a completely different environment.

So it turns out that through the eyes of an unnatural doll we are faced with various moral problems. Through the eyes of this doll, we must perceive them, comprehend them and draw a conclusion. But how can all this be done if we see the problem through a cloudy glass?..

Rating: 4

At one time I missed this book, which I should have read a long time ago. Well, the book is, one might say, required reading.

Making the reader sympathize with a scumbag is not an easy task. In A Clockwork Orange, the hero is not even a scumbag, but a terrible, disgusting monster, morally primitive to the point of complete absence of any morality. A certain intellectual level and musicality inherent in this monster make it even more disgusting and terrible. And yet, the author’s skill is such that you begin to sympathize with this monster. Despite the fact that, having lost the ability to cut, beat and rape, he remained the same bastard he was - a disgusting, calculating sadist.

The novel gets to the core. I do not want to perceive it as some kind of doctrine or philosophizing about resistance or non-resistance to violence. I think of it as a story about a sadistic maniac who lives nearby, not far away, in a neighboring house - and that such maniacs exist, and also that, it turns out, with the power of words, I can be forced to empathize with this maniac. And it is in this that I see the power, the eerie power of the work.

The ending, in my opinion, was not a success for the author; he did not find anything to end with. So, the ending that Burgess proposes - the transformation of a scumbag into an everyman just because he has matured - seemed to me frankly unsuccessful and immoral, if not immoral. Everything else is beyond praise.

Rating: 9

If the author made you hate the main character with all your soul, does that mean that the book is vile and generally trash, not worthy of being rated higher than Armada's chewing gum? If the author's stylistic intentions make the book very difficult to read at first, does that mean that you shouldn't read it at all? If you always have a film adaptation of a universally recognized masterpiece at hand, is it necessary to waste time on some letters on paper?

And what are the general criteria for a good book worth reading? In my opinion, the book should be harmonious, logical, it should maintain a balance between the philosophical, social and psychological aspects. For the rather complex genre of dystopia, due to its ossification, this balance is doubly important.

Although the psychological aspect may recede into the background, because most dystopias in one form or another talk about the interaction of an individual and a system, and in such a typical situation the character can also be quite typical. However, “A Clockwork Orange” is not Zamyatin’s “We”; Burgess’s society is not subject to total control, it is more individual, and, therefore, the hero should be more realistic.

Of course, even if they are negative, the strong feelings that Alex evokes - from hatred to disgust - are an undoubted indicator of the author’s skill. And the fact that Alex is a typical product of the system, and therefore making him atypical would be strange, is quite understandable. But I think Burgess could have made the character more complete and his development logical. Yes, of course, the author succeeded in convincingly showing the untapped energy of teenagers (Have you never wanted to scream at the top of your lungs or start throwing everything against the walls?), albeit in an ugly, hypertrophied form. But serious problems arise with the degree of hypertrophy. Therefore, the ending, in which Alex radically changes his views on the world, attributing it to growing up, causes laughter. You can grow out of childhood pranks, such as yelling at your parents, returning to the student dormitory in the morning, carving the name of your favorite band or even light drugs into your skin, but you don’t grow out of murder, robbery and rape, especially richly seasoned with a hardened prison.

Therefore, Burgess's ending seems less like the conclusion of a wise man, and more like a naive hope, hastily covering up deep fear and uncertainty. So an omission in the psychological aspect of the work directly affects the other two, and it is in no way possible for someone pretending to write a dystopia to be false in the social and philosophical spheres.

However, we still have to get to the finale, but on the way there the novel cannot but please. Casually, casually, but, surprisingly, in no way superficial, Burgess poses very interesting questions and bitterly states the obvious.

Alex is a disgusting individual who loves classical music. Can something disgusting and evil love beauty or, conversely, someone who loves classical music be bad? We are somehow accustomed to the fact that if a person is interested in art, he is well-mannered, intelligent, and interesting. What about Alex? Another flaw of the author? No, by no means, Burgess is very clear here. Alex likes the external aspects of music, its effect, sounds, their volume and richness, which does not so much awaken emotions as enhance existing ones. Thus, while listening to music (Brodgess very clearly placed accents, showing what kind of classics the young bastard listens to), Alex subconsciously uses it, without understanding what he is listening to. Yes, maybe the music gradually changes him and he is a little better than his friends, but not fundamentally. Music is like a drug for Alex; he chases the sensations it gives him, and not the music itself.

Who is Alex - a teenager who defines and creates the world around him, or is he himself, in turn, a product of the system as a whole? Here, in my opinion, Burgess is also quite specific. Alex uses violence, but even more violence is used against him. He is beaten by law enforcement officers, by prisoners in prison, by guards and doctors, by old people and intellectuals, by enemies and friends. Society is permeated with violence, which breeds more violence. An eye for an eye? No, an eye for an eye, and then for the fact that it hurts, accumulated and demands to be thrown out, for the fact that you are weaker, younger, do not resist, ended up underfoot in the end. Alex's victims themselves create the world in which they live. This does not make the crimes of the protagonist of our time any less inhuman, but at least they find an explanation for their reasons.

Does imposed good become real and is it better than free will? Each reader will find the answer to this question himself, so let’s pose it a little differently. Does the scumbag who was forcibly rendered helpless deserve the world into which he was pushed? No matter how much hatred the guy causes, the world around him is even nastier, so much so that even for the scoundrel Alex it’s hard not to find at least a drop of sympathy.

Moreover, he aroused the most sympathy in me personally not when he was beaten again (servely right, by the way), but when they began to use him for political purposes. No matter how disgusting the spontaneous violence, the uncontrollable storm of rage, the unctuous Machiavellianism of the calculating politicians in power, the “noble revolutionaries” who do not disdain inveterate scum, are worse, much worse. Do you feel sorry for the writer whose wife was raped and murdered, the writer who has still not lost his humanity, kindness and compassion? Do you feel sorry for the cold, unfortunate Lenin, nursing the humiliated and insulted, sympathizing with him only in order to later use him for his own purposes?

Thus, whether you like it or not, the choice is simple - disgusting Alex or an even more disgusting world.

Surprisingly, with so much violence, A Clockwork Orange cannot be said to be a difficult read. Getting through the language of the 1910s (oh, an impossible dream - reading a book with the eyes of someone who has never heard of Russian words!) is difficult at first, but for some reason not so much through the beatings.

Besides the language, an original but difficult to adapt mixture of English and Russian, the novel stands out for its thoughtful composition. Burgess, in the best traditions of his time, takes Alex through his personal Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, dragging the reader there too. The “pranks” of Alex and his friends and, accordingly, the disgust experienced by the reader at the sight of them, play the role of Hell, a fair, but too mild punishment and a chance to improve parody the idea of ​​Purgatory, but the Paradise of the forcibly good Alex shows that no matter how bad he is underdant, the blessed ones will not survive there.

Bottom line: And yet I cannot rate the novel very highly. Not because Alex is disgusting, and the author justifies him (or so it seems to the least attentive readers), not because the text in Latin dazzles the eyes, and not even because it was replicated in thanks in large part to the famous film adaptation. All this just speaks of the high quality of the work, which evokes a lively emotional response (it would be much worse if readers were indifferent to Alex and his atrocities, it would show that Burgess was right in the most primitive sense), sparkling with originality of style (try to come up with something truly original and unused in a craft that is thousands of years old!), which served as the basis for a legendary film (how many film adaptations can you list that are at least as good as the original source?). But the shortcomings of psychology and the completely artificial cowardly ending, showing a total inability to give answers to well-posed questions, are a much more serious accusation.

Rating: 7

They say that prison is supposed to reform people. Unfortunately, prison is not capable of correcting society the way those in power would like it to. And they would really like this.

Burgess's gloomy vision of the future was composed of two components that were relevant to the London of his time: the activity of teenage gangs and the popularity of neo-behaviorist theories that sought to study “psychology without the psyche.” Supporters of these psychological ideas they were going to put into practice something similar to what they did in the book with Alex for social correction. By the way, this is why the experiments carried out on the main character are so reminiscent of the tests with Academician Pavlov’s dogs - the essence is the same. However, Burgess cannot be called a supporter or opponent - satirical novel is, both for youth gangsters and bold, almost scientific ideas, and therefore naturally raises two themes: growing up and personal freedom, raised in literature over the centuries.

Shorty Alex is a young hooligan who wanders the streets in the company of friends, despite the fact that by age he cannot even be called a youth, he is already the leader in his company, robs, beats passers-by and even kills. The way Burgess wrote out the scenes of the attacks indicates a clear understanding of the psyche of a bully, who does not at all consider his behavior wrong and spits in the face of all prohibitions, mocking the old man with books. He also really loves Mozart, Beethoven, and classical music in general, but the sense of beauty is not directed in the traditional direction, because for Alex the beauty is to beat, kill, rape and bring suffering to others. Already here the author notes that people and their views on life are radically different, which is then expressed in the thought voiced by the commandant of the prison: “Perhaps a person who has chosen evil is in some way better than a good person, but not good in his own way.” choice?”, which is quite consistent with the spirit of the novel about individuality as the dominant standard of morality.

Burgess wrote a dystopia about the future, but the time in which Alex and his friends live will definitely never come, at least in this setting. Written back in 1962, the novel outgrew dystopia and became more of an absurdity about a parallel reality where “something went wrong.” There is no clear setting here, there are only some notes about fashion and morals, about young people growing up early, about technical development. Actually, what’s good about a satirical book is that it is never serious, because if Burgess had written a realistic forecast or “warning,” it would have sunk into oblivion long ago, but this did not happen, and one must hope not only because Kubrick made a movie.

The main highlight is the slang in which local teenagers, the nadtsatyh generation, communicate. The fact that he is so close to the Russian reader is not accidental; not only the translators tried, but Burgess himself borrowed something from the vocabulary of Leningrad dudes, which, combined with the manners of the English “Teddy Boys” and the increasing crime rate in youth circles, gave birth to something new , which can easily be passed off as a version of teenagers of the future, immoral, arrogant, dangerous, despising age and intellectual development, living with self-centeredness in an era as dark as their thoughts. Even the aesthetics seem classical music or healthy image The life that Alex’s company still adhered to is embodied here in a negative light, as the inspiration and strength of the young robbers. Actually, Burgess was not so far from the truth, in fact, he “predicted” the increased popularity of skinheads in the early seventies.

The very name “A Clockwork Orange” is very satirical and even self-critical; Burgess gave it to a book written by one of the heroes of his novel, the writer F. Alexander, which Alex characterizes in the same way as one could say about the book of Burgess himself. However, unlike F. Alexander, Burgess hardly pursued political goals, making it clear that one political regime is no better than another for an individual, from whom no more than a vote in elections is required. The political pamphlet is not the only pseudo-genre of A Clockwork Orange; the conclusions to be drawn from the novel, and especially from the ending, indicate the conservatism of the author’s views, which is not entirely characteristic of the current underground (although, who knows, what it was like there in ’62) , however, outwardly, even today, this is certainly him.

If we compare the book with Kubrick’s film adaptation, there is only one significant difference - the director cut off an important part of the ending, where Alex grows up, summing up the film with a recovery scene. Nowadays, the book, less popular than the film, can hardly be imagined in isolation from the visual aesthetics of Stanley Kubrick and the image of Malcolm McDowell, who at the time of filming was twice as old as the book Alex. One thing is for sure - without Kubrick, Burgess would not be so famous today, yet the underground often depends on relevance, and if teenage gangsterism remains, then the possibility of doctors like the local Brodsky appearing today is much less. But the presence in the film adaptation of a classic film, I think, is much more reliable than social views.

Result: literary underground and good example fantasy book, which, despite its obsessive underground nature, celebrates the good old freedom of the individual, satirically ridiculing all attempts to influence it from the outside.

- Well, what now, huh?

The company is like this: me, that is, Alex, and my three drugs, that is, Pete, Georgik and Tem, and Tem was really a dark guy, in the sense of stupid, and we were sitting in the Korova milk bar, making mozgoi about that , where to kill the evening - so vile, cold and gloomy winter evening, although dry. Milk bar “Korova” - it was a zavedenije, where they served “milk-plus”, although, damn it, you probably already forgot what kind of zavedenija they were: of course, nowadays everything changes so quickly, it is forgotten right before our eyes , nobody cares, no one even really reads newspapers these days. In general, they served “milk-plus” - that is, milk plus some additives. They didn’t have a permit to sell alcohol, but there was no law yet against mixing some of the new shtutshek into good old milk, and you could drink it with Velocet, Drenkrom, or even some other shtutshek , from which a quiet baldiozh comes, and for about fifteen minutes you feel that the Lord God himself with all his holy army is sitting in your left shoe, and sparks and fireworks are jumping through your brain. You could also pitt “milk with knives,” as we called it, it gave off tortsh, and I wanted dratsing, I wanted to gasitt someone in full, one for the whole kodloi, and on that evening from which I began my story, This is exactly what we drank.

Our pockets were full of babok, and therefore, to make a toltshok to some old hanyge in an alley, obtriasti him and watch him swim in a pool of blood while we count the loot and divide it among four, nothing to us, in general, it didn’t particularly force me, just as nothing forced me to do krasting in the shop of some shaking old ptitsy, and then rvatt kogti with the contents of the cash register. However, it is not without reason that they say that money is not everything.

Each of the four of us was prikinut latest fashion, which in those days meant a pair of black tight-fitting pants with an iron cup sewn into the step, like those in which children bake Easter cakes from sand, we called it a sandbox, and it was attached under the pants, both for protection and as a decoration, which in certain lighting stood out quite clearly, and so, I had this thing in the shape of a spider, Pete had a ruker (hand, that means), Georgie got this fancy one, in the shape of a tsvetujotshka, and Tem thought of adding something completely disgusting, sort of like a clown's morder (face, that is) - but with Tema, what a demand, he was generally weak in thinking, both in zhizni and in general, well, dark, in general, the darkest of us all. Then we were given short jackets without lapels, but with huge false shoulders (s myshtsoi, as we called them), in which we looked like caricatured strongmen from a comic book. Damn it, there were also ties that came with them, whitish ones that looked like they were made from mashed potatoes with a pattern drawn with a fork. We didn’t grow our hair too long and wore a powerful shoe, like a govnodav, to kick.

- Well, what now, huh?

There were three kisy (girls, that is) sitting side by side at the counter, but there were four of us, patsanov, and we either have one for everyone, or one for each. Kisy were dressed up, God forbid, in purple, orange and green wigs, each costing no less than three or four weeks of her salary, and the makeup matched (rainbows around the glazzjev and a widely painted rot). At that time they wore black dresses, long and very strict, and on the grudiah there were small silver badges with different male names– Joe, Mike and so on. It was believed that these were the mallshiki with whom they lay spatt when they were under fourteen. They all looked in our direction, and I almost said (quietly, of course, from the corner of my mouth) that wouldn’t it be better for the three of us to have a little porezvittsia, and let poor Tem, they say, rest, since we have only problems, that he should give him half a liter of white wine with a dose of synthemesc mixed in there, although still it would not be comradely. In appearance, Tem was very, very disgusting, the name suited him quite well, but in mahatshe he had no value, and he used govnodavy especially liho.

- Well, what now, huh?

Hanurik, sitting next to me on a long velvet seat that ran along three walls of the room, was already in complete otjezde: glazzja glazed, sitting and some kind of murniu muttering like “The works of Aristotle’s grunt-grunt are becoming thoroughly awesome.” Hanurik was already fine, went into orbit, as they say, and I knew what it was, I tried it myself more than once, like everyone else, but that evening I suddenly thought that this was still a vile shtuka, a way out for panties, damn it. You drink this tricky milk, you fall over, but in the bashke there is one thing: everything around is bred and hrenovina, and in general all this has already happened before. You see everything normally, you even see it very clearly - tables, a jukebox, lamps, kisok and malltshikov - but it all seems to be somewhere far away, in the past, but in fact there is nothing at all. At the same time, you stare at your shoe or, say, a nail and look, look, as if in a trance, and at the same time you feel as if they took you by the scruff of the neck and shook you like a kitten. They shake you until everything is shaken out of you. Your name, your body, your very “I”, but you don’t care, you just look and wait until your shoe or your nail starts to turn yellow, yellow, yellow... Then before your eyes everything starts to explode - right atomic war, - and your shoe, or nail, or, there, the dirt on your trouser leg grows, grows, damn it, swells, and now the whole world, zaraza, has been obscured, and then you are ready to go straight to God in heaven. And you will return from there soggy, whimpering, the morder is distorted - hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Normal, in general, but somehow cowardly. We did not come into this world to communicate with God. This can suck all the strength out of a guy, every last drop.

- Well, what now, huh?

The radio was playing with all its might, and in stereo, so that the singer’s golosnia seemed to move from one corner of the bar to another, fly up to the ceiling, then fall again and bounce from wall to wall. It was Bertie Lasky who did that old shtuku called “Peel the Paint Off Me.” One of the three kisoks at the counter, the one in a green wig, either stuck out her belly, then pulled it in again to the beat of what they called music. I felt a torment from the knives in the cunning milk, and I was ready to imitate something like “heaps and loads.” I yelled “Legs, legs, legs!” as if he had been stabbed to death, he cracked the departed hanygu across the vat, or, as we say, v tykvu, but he didn’t even feel it, continuing to mutter about “telephonic jabberland and granullandia, which are always a big hole.” When he returns from heaven, he will feel everything, and how!

- And where to? – Georgie asked.

“What difference does it make,” I say, “there’s glianem there—maybe something will turn up, damn it.”

In general, we rolled out into the vast winter notsh and walked first along Marganita Boulevard, and then turned onto Boothbay Avenue and there we found what we were looking for - a small toltshok, with which we could start the evening. We came across a tattered starikashka, a weak tshelovek in glasses, grasping the cold night air with his gaping hlebalom. With books and a stained umbrella under his arm, he left the public biblio on the corner, where in those days normal people rarely went. And in general, in those days, respectable, as they say, decent people did not really walk the streets after dark - there was not enough police, but broken malltshipaltshiki like us were hanging around everywhere, so this stari professor was the only passerby on the entire street. In general, I approached him, everything was neat, and I said: “I’m sorry, damn it.”

A Clockwork Orange, which opens with a shot completely bathed in red, captures the spirit of its time in general and 1971 in particular very well. The main theme of those years was cruelty and violence, which viewers around the world witnessed with their own eyes in life and in films. By the time the film was released, America was in full swing with youth riots - increasingly angry and impersonal. At the same time, the Red Brigades began operating in Italy, kidnapping famous politicians and sabotaging factories of large corporations. In Germany, the Red Army Faction (RAF) began to set fire to department stores, rob banks and make attempts on the lives of high-ranking officials. In Britain, the conflict between the government and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was waging an urban guerrilla war for the independence of Northern Ireland, reached a climax just in time for the English premiere of A Clockwork Orange. The general background for all this was the American war in Vietnam - one of the most cruel and senseless of the entire 20th century. From real life, violence spread to cinema, which hinted to viewers: if violence is the only way to resolve a critical situation, then it is justified. A Clockwork Orange, unlike other films about violence that gave viewers the false impression that they were protected from Evil by an insurmountable barrier, proved that everyone is equally to blame for what happens around them. That is why his appearance on the screen caused scandal and indignation among many viewers.

1. A film that didn’t suit anyone, but hit the box office

A Clockwork Orange became Stanley Kubrick's highest-grossing film. With a budget of $2 million, the total box office gross for the film's 10-year run (from 1972 to 1982) was $40 million. Despite its commercial success, the content of A Clockwork Orange did not suit either the right (conservative part of the audience) or the left (liberal viewers). “The film certainly expresses radical political views, but it is difficult to attribute them to any one camp.” Kubrick simultaneously ridicules socialism and fascism, conservatives and liberals, police officers and human rights activists, two-faced politicians and narrow-minded voters, modern art and the Age of Enlightenment... The ambiguity of the film forced reviewers to rely solely on their own ideas about the beautiful and the terrible. Is this art or pornography? Topical satire or an immoral story with misogynistic and misanthropic overtones? Viewer responses to the film were sometimes diametrically opposed, which was explained by the historical situation: one of the consequences of the sexual revolutions of the 1960s was complete confusion in the definitions of pornography and obscenity.

2. Screen adaptation with a difference of one chapter

“A Clockwork Orange” is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by English writer Anthony Burgess, whose real fame came only after the release of the film. The novel was written in 1962 and expressed the author’s (rather conservative) attitude towards modern England. The novel was based on a true dramatic story that happened to the writer during the Second World War, when his wife was raped by four deserters of the American army. The main significant difference between the film and the book is the last chapter, which was thrown out by American publishers when the novel was published in the United States. Kubrick learned about its existence after work began, but this did not affect his plans in any way. The optimistic content of this chapter, where the main character took the path of correction, according to the director, contradicted the pessimistic spirit of the film.

3. The title "A Clockwork Orange": Cockney vs. Behaviorism

According to Burgess, the title of his novel refers to the phrase “strange as a clockwork orange,” which is a London Cockney word for “a person with quirks.” However, perhaps the writer invented this expression himself. The Warner Brothers studio explained the meaning of the title differently: after psychological treatment, the main character turns into “a clockwork orange - on the outside he is healthy and intact, but on the inside he is disfigured by a reflex mechanism beyond his control.” For Kubrick himself, the film with an unusual name became a form of correspondence polemic with the American psychologist Frederick Skinner* and his popular book “Beyond Freedom and Dignity,” where he preached and developed the ideas of behaviorism. This direction in psychology claims that human behavior, his desires and aspirations are entirely predetermined by the influence of the environment. Therefore, by changing the environment, it is possible to model and change human behavior - just as you can teach mice to dance or force pigeons to play ping-pong (the results of Skinner's experiments). “A person needs to have a choice,” Kubrick explained the main idea of ​​his film, “to be good or bad, even if he chooses the latter, to deprive a person of the opportunity to choose means to depersonalize him, to make him a clockwork orange.

1. * It is no coincidence that the creators of the animated series “The Simpsons” gave the name “Skinner” to one of their characters - the director primary school Springfield.

4. Style of the main characters: hello to English skinheads

The outfits of the members of Alex's gang* - a white shirt with decorations on the cuffs in the form of bloody eyeballs, white trousers with a boxer shell covering the groin, army boots, suspenders and a baton cane with a knife in the handle - are reminiscent of the equipment of skinheads of the late 1960s. In this way, the authors wanted to connect their present (early 1970s) with the uncertain future in which the events of the novel take place.

1. * The costume designer is Italian designer Milena Canonero, who later received three Oscars and dozens of other awards for her work on other Kubrick films.

5. Milk bar Korova: the language of the “elevenths”

The name of the establishment where Alex's gang spends free time, has Russian-speaking roots, like the slang that the main characters use. To avoid an exact indication of the time of action of the novel, Burges invented the so-called language of the “-twelfths” (a hybrid of English and Russian languages ​​*), that is, those who are from thirteen to nineteen. It is in this language that the main character Alex tells his story.

6. First victim: beating a beggar

The regressive political atmosphere of 1971 is most accurately conveyed by the line shouted in the film by the old homeless man who became the first victim of Alex’s gang: “People are on the Moon, people are flying around the Earth, but on the Earth itself, no one cares about the law or order.”

7. The main character: a villain and a subtle connoisseur of beauty

The prototype for the image of the main character, as Kubrick explained, was Richard III - the villain from Shakespeare's play of the same name, a criminal-artist, an intelligent young man with almost aristocratic manners: “Alex is aware of his own evil and openly accepts it. He makes no attempt to deceive himself or the audience about the deep depravity and malice of his nature. His image is a blatant personification of evil.” According to the director, the audience should simultaneously fear and hate the character of Alex: he personifies not so much individual social shortcomings (crime, cynicism, etc.), but embodies dark sides consciousness of human society as a whole. “Most of the audience,” Kubrick noted, “recognizes this, which gives them a sympathetic attitude towards Alex. Others, on the contrary, experience anger and awkwardness. They can’t find the strength to admit it, so they start getting angry at the film.”

8. Fight with Willy the Pig's Gang

The scene of the fight between Alex's gang and the Willy Pig gang is accompanied by Rossini's idyllic overture to The Thieving Magpie. This technique (defamiliarization) - combining music and image in contrast, due to which the violence on the screen is perceived by the audience as detached - Kubrick uses repeatedly throughout the film. He shows the fight itself not in its entirety, but in a montage, capturing only individual instantaneous phases: a jump towards the enemy, a fall from a window, a headbutt in the stomach, etc. This turns the scene into a kind of stylized ballet, which removes the naturalism of the shots and saves the viewer from inevitable shock. “Everything bloody and terrible,” noted the Soviet critic Yuri Khanyutin, “is seen as if through a thick, but absolutely transparent glass of time... There is a cold detachment, non-participation, a sense of distance, even when the closest plans are used”*. For the American critic Pauline Kael, this technique, on the contrary, gave reason to accuse Kubrick of speculation and instilling in the audience immunity to violence: “In the numerous episodes of rape and brutal beatings there is neither rage nor sensuality, they are cold-blooded and carefully calculated, and, since the viewer does not see There are no emotional motives behind this, he may feel insulted.”

9. Durango 95

The car in which Alex's gang travels existed in reality as an English small-scale sports car and was called Adams Brothers Probe 16 *.

10. HOME

With the scene of the attack on the writer's house, Kubrick emphasizes that in the world of the future, the victims are primarily those who are ready to come to the aid of other people. It is no coincidence that the writer’s home (with the eloquent name HOUSE), where Alex’s gang penetrates almost without any obstacles, is the only interior in the film where there is no pop art, pastoral paintings hang on the walls, and the cabinets are filled with books. Its complete opposite is Alex’s apartment, where his indifferent and cruel parents live, or the house of the Cat Lady, who is afraid to open the door to a stranger.

11. “Singing in the Rain”: testing the Ludovico method on the audience

The song “Singin' in the Rain” was written in 1929 for one of MGM's first sound films, but it only achieved its canonical status when performed by American actor Gene Kelly in 1952 in the film of the same name. By using a classic Hollywood song, Kubrick is, in a sense, mocking* the “good” but hypocritical Hollywood cinema. With “Singin’ in the Rain,” the director tests the audience with his own behavioral method of processing: “Many, including myself, will never again be able to look at Gene Kelly joyfully dancing in the rain without a creeping nausea and resentment at A Clockwork Orange, so unceremoniously who appropriated this song."

1. * Kubrick's relationship with Hollywood was not going well. This was partly the reason for his emigration from the US to the UK, where American producers could not control his work.

12. “Viddy well, little brother!”: subjective camera

Despite the fact that Alex's story is told in the first person in the film, there are a number of scenes in A Clockwork Orange that are shown through the eyes of other characters (in particular, when the writer, Mr. Alexander, looks from the floor at Alex wearing a mask with a huge phallus nose ). Thanks to them, the narrative acquires an objective and impartial character: “after this it becomes difficult to perceive any of the heroes as a mouthpiece of moral truth*.”

13. After-party at the Korova bar: kitsch is the most important of the arts

The figures of naked women that decorate the Korova bar are a parody of the provocative works of sculptor Allen Jones*, one of the most prominent representatives of British pop art of the 1960s. A whole series of his works consisted of furniture constructed from life-size female mannequins standing in slave positions. The result of development contemporary art, according to Kubrick, there will be a blurring of the difference between art, kitsch and pornography: “Erotics will [sooner or later] become** popular art, and erotic paintings will be as accessible as posters of the African savannah.”

14. England: their socialist future

The painted mural in the entrance to Alex's house is considered one of the evidence that the England of the future has turned into a socialist country, although there are no other direct hints to this in the film.

15. Alex: evil as such

A short scene that emphasizes the image of Alex: the selfish motive in his crimes is one of last places. He commits atrocities for the sake of atrocities themselves, so he is almost indifferent to stolen money and valuables.

16. Beethoven: sadistic fantasies and erotic ecstasy

Alex's love for Beethoven's work is contrasted with the attitude towards the music of his contemporaries: for them it does not represent any sacred value. In the world of the future, music can only entertain, performing utilitarian functions (“stimulating the mood”). On the contrary, for Alex, music in general and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in particular is a source of colossal experiences, giving rise to sadistic fantasies and erotic ecstasy. Soviet newspaper " TVNZ“In 1972, in a review of the film, she noted: “Education is not an obstacle to cruelty, understanding music does not exclude sadism. This is not a new thought for humanity, which survived Hitler, who adored Wagner, and the sentimental SS men, who listened to Mozart with emotion. Not new and at the same time extremely relevant.”

17. Dancing Jesuses: the work of Herman McKinck

To depict the past, present or future, Kubrick, as a matter of principle, never specially invented anything and always used already existing things. The sculpture depicting the dancing Jesus is actually the work of Dutch artist Herman McKinck*. It became part of the interior of Alex’s room after Kubrick saw it in the artist’s studio.

18. Alex's Visions: Vampire

Beethoven's music evokes from Alex's subconscious a whole set of images: explosions, disasters, deaths, but most importantly - the idea of ​​himself as a vampire, obsessed with the thirst for blood and violence.

19. Pop art

According to the definition of the English artist Richard Hamilton, pop art is popular (intended for a mass audience), disposable (easily forgotten), cheap, mass-produced, young (addressed to youth), witty, sexy, “with a trick,” charming, very profitable movement contemporary art. A Clockwork Orange was filmed during the peak period of England's influence on world fashion and pop culture and became Kubrick's only film about modern British society. The director's diagnosis of this society is disappointing: in the world of the future, pop art has supplanted and replaced a culture that has fallen into decline. The cramped apartment of Alex and his parents is designed in pop art aesthetics: bright wallpaper, and realistic portraits of a dark-skinned woman with big eyes and a prominent bust. True, unlike the house of the rich Cat Lady, it is rather proletarian kitsch, personifying bad taste.

20. Record Store: Say hello to Swinging London

The image in which Alex appeared in the music store (Edwardian coat with padded shoulders, tight trousers, cane) evoked in the audience of those years memories of the recent past rather than fantasies of the near future. Similar images were popular in England in the second half of the 1960s, during the era of “Swinging London”*.

1. * about Swinging London

21. Sex at 2 frames per second: let's make it quick

Group sex scene in Alex's room with two girls from music store The filmmakers demonstrate at a speed of 2 frames per second: in reality, a 40-second scene took about half an hour to film. Paired with Rossini's frivolous, feverish overture to William Tell, the sex scene becomes a comic ballet and makes a sarcastic, derogatory assessment of mechanical teenage sex.

22. I don’t feel sorry for anyone, no one: Alex beats up his friends

The cruelty of Alex, who does not spare even his friends, is deliberately excessive. Kubrick explained this by the desire to prevent the audience from making excuses for the main character after scenes in which the government performs an inhumane experiment on him: “Given the actions of the government towards Alex, it was necessary to emphasize his bestial nature even more. Otherwise it would lead to confusion in the moral aspect. If he had not been such a scoundrel, then anyone could have said: “He should not have been subjected to such psychological treatment; It’s so terrible, he’s not such a bad guy after all.”

23. Beethoven vs. phallus: 0:1

The fight to the death between Alex and Cat Lady, which takes place using works of art, literally turns into a fight of Freudian metaphors-symbols: a woman attacks using a Beethoven figurine, a bully swings away with a huge porcelain phallus*. Thus, the death of the lady, taken from the giant phallus, symbolizes the assertion of power in this world masculinity.

1. * The porcelain phallus is the work of the same artist who created the Dancing Jesuses, Herman McKinck.

24. New costume: symbol of submission

The classic blue suit in A Clockwork Orange is a symbol of Alex's submission to the authorities and rules that operate in this world.

25. Homosexual connotations

A Clockwork Orange is filled with suggestive imagery, which made it an inspiration for gay men in its time. In particular, allusions to A Clockwork Orange were often found in the images of David Bowie, the main androgynous superstar of English glam rock of the 1970s.

26. Alex Reads the Bible: The Essential Book of Violence

Despite the fact that Alex is the devil incarnate, he cannot be called an atheist (unlike other prisoners). In particular, this follows from Alex's dreams while reading the Bible, when he vividly imagines himself as a Roman soldier beating Christ during the procession to Calvary. According to James Naremore, all this fits perfectly with Burgess's idea that man has both the carnal and the spiritual: “I believe in original sin,” Burgess explained the background of his novel, “from which it follows that man must fall in order to be reborn. At the beginning, Alex's immaturity is emphasized. He is still helpless - still feeding on milk. Then he is forced to respond - not to his own, but to external signals. He then tries to commit suicide by jumping out of the window - this represents the fall of a man. Now its revival must take place, but not through the state. It will happen through the person himself and his ability to recognize the value of choice.”

1. * Original sin is the name given in the Christian tradition to the guilt that humanity bears for the transgression of Adam and Eve, who sinned in the Garden of Eden.

27. Prison chaplain: hidden gay, clown and spokesman for the truth

According to Kubrick, after the release of A Clockwork Orange, the newspaper Catholic News rated and supported the film most highly. The director kept the review from this publication as a keepsake and, on occasion, quoted it to other journalists: “Stanley Kubrick shows that man is more than a product of heredity and (or) environment. And, as the clergyman, who is friendly to Alex, says (who rants and clowns at the beginning, and “at the end” expresses the main thesis of the film): “When a person is deprived of the opportunity to choose, he ceases to be a person... The film, apparently, wants to say that deprivation freedom of choice not only does not save, but completely deprives a person of the possibility of action... In the name of supporting certain moral values, a person’s change must be born from an internal impulse, and not imposed from the outside. Saving a person is an extremely difficult matter. But Kubrick is an artist, not a moralist, so he invites us to decide what is wrong and why, what needs to be done and how it should be done.”

28. Ludovico's method: turning Alex into a moral robot

The film show during Alex's treatment using the Ludovico method became an opportunity for Kubrick to clearly prove that screen violence is not responsible for the appearance of violence in life: “There is no clear evidence that the violence that we see in films and on television gives rise to social violence... - said Kubrick. - An attempt to assign any responsibility to art as a source of life seems to me to be a completely wrong way of asking the question. Art can change the form of life, but not create or cause it. Moreover, it is impossible to attribute to art a possible power of influence, because this is completely at odds with the accepted scientific view of art, which is that even in the state that comes after hypnosis, a person is not able to commit an act that is contrary to his nature.”

29. Returning home: we didn’t expect it

Describing the man of the technological age, the philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm says that he “suffers not so much from a passion for destruction as from total alienation; perhaps it is more appropriate to describe him as an unfortunate creature who feels nothing - neither love, nor hatred, nor pity for what was destroyed, nor the thirst to destroy; This is no longer a person, but just an automaton.” Alex's parents are undoubtedly the kind of automata that Fromm writes about. Their alienation is so great that they can only recognize their son based on newspaper articles.

30. Death of a boa constrictor: an allusion to a biblical story

After returning home, Alex learns of the death of his pet, a boa constrictor. The death of the snake, which in Christian mythology is the personification of the tempting devil, sarcastically hints at the triumph of science, which has triumphed over man and his faith.

31. Beating Alex: Beggars' Revenge

From prison, Alex returns to a world where other people have all the qualities and properties that he is forcibly deprived of. And now all those whom Alex once bullied are beginning to take revenge on him. So it turns out that a person deprived of aggressive instincts and the ability to commit violence cannot survive in this world. And if it is quite difficult to eradicate these instincts, then it is quite easy to arouse them by the very spectacle of defenselessness. All his victims easily accept the role of torturers. According to Kubrick, a person in the modern world has only one alternative - to be a victim or an executioner.

32. Kubrick's bathroom: hello, subconscious!

The bathroom in all Kubrick's films is always a place of manifestation of the unconscious. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex, without thinking about the possible consequences, lies in the bathtub and carefreely hums the song "Singin' in the Rain", by which the owner of the house identifies him.

33. Dinner with Mr. Alexander: “a crime against the art of acting”

In the dinner scene, the actor playing the writer overacts monstrously*, but this is no accident: Kubrick wanted exactly this effect. Examples of such inappropriate behavior can be found in all of Kubrick's later films. It confuses the viewer with its inappropriateness, so critics often find this technique annoying and unfunny. Nevertheless, Kubrick always strived for illogicality in acting, a sharp transition from naturalism to absurdity: “In this regard, he takes a conscious risk; Let’s remember the impossibly drawn out and, generally speaking, insane scene of Alex’s return to his father’s house or how Alex, smacking his lips, eats dinner in the hospital.”

34. The Writer's Revenge: a film without positive characters

The writer not only takes revenge on the helpless Alex, whom he tries to drive to suicide, but also uses him for political purposes to fight the current government. They all don't care about Alex himself. Thus, there are no positive characters in A Clockwork Orange.

35. The Minister spoon feeds Alex

A satirical shot of the Minister of Internal Affairs himself feeding Alex crowns the story of the criminal’s relationship with the state. The scene is symbolic: society literally spoon-feeds the criminal, and he mocks the situation. “Good” Alex is persecuted, killed by society, and having returned to his natural state of evil, he becomes needed by the country. Ultimately, Alex is the only likable character, and ends up in the same position at the end of the film as he was at the beginning: "The crippled villain returns to the busy life of a male."

36. Sex with applause: final shot

The final shots depict Alex's fantasies inspired by Beethoven. This scene (the only one in the entire film where all participants clearly enjoy sex) is just a figment of Alex’s unhealthy imagination, who sees himself as a participant in some kind of theatrical performance. Alex's aggression is accepted and approved by high society, and now he will now sow violence, relying on politicians and the elite.

37. Captions: Hello, Alex!

By using the song "Singin' in the Rain" once again during the end credits, Kubrick hints at Alex's recovery and his return to society as a full member.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, 1972 Bruskova