Kubrick: Degrees of Madness

The milk-plus at the Korova, according to Alex, "sharpens you up and makes you ready tor a bit of the old ultra-violence." After a glass or two, Alex and his droogs have made up their ras-soodocks what to do for entertainment.

They bash up an old drunk who lies singing in a tunnel. They bloody Billyboy and his gang. They steal a Durango-95 and roar out into the countryside, running cars and pedestrians off the road. They pay "the old surprise visit" to a quiet home, force their way in, tie and gag the man of the house and rape his wife. Then, all feeling "a bit shagged and fagged and fashed," they retire once again to the Korova. After all, as Alex says, it has been "an evening of some small energy expenditures."

The language may be a bit strange, the setting slightly unfamiliar, but Alex is immediately recognizable. He is a true child of the near future, a freak for violence, who would understand and enthusiastically approve Charlie Manson's credo: "Do the unexpected. No sense makes sense." Yet the confounding thing, and perhaps the ultimate irony of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, is that Alex is surprisingly but undeniably engaging.

A Clockwork Orange, based on the Anthony Burgess novel, is a merciless, demoniac satire in the future imperfect. It posits a world somehow gone berserk, in which there are no real alternatives, only degrees of madness. Kubrick makes the whole thing (as he did in Dr. Strangelove) chillingly and often hilariously believable. Alex, so contemptuously in control, soon becomes a victim of his own lunatic society.

Imprisoned for a random murder, Alex (Malcolm McDowell) manages to have himself chosen as a guinea pig in a scientific experiment designed to rehabilitate him in two weeks. He submits to the Ludovico Technique, a behavioristic barrage of electric impulses and motion-picture film that cripples him with nausea at the mere thought of sex or violence. Thoroughly zapped, Alex is transformed into a kind of automaton, a clockwork orange, with no free will of his own. "As decent a lad as you would meet on a May morning!" gushes the Minister of the Interior (Anthony Sharp), who hopes to use Alex and the Ludovico Technique for political gain.

Soon Alex is menaced on all sides, by the old bum, by his former droogs (now turned policemen), by the husband of the woman he raped. It is what Kubrick calls "an almost magical coincidence of retribution"--so magical, in fact, that it eventually brings Alex back full circle, recovered from the Ludovico Technique and ready to embark on a life of ultra-violence with the blessings of the Minister of the Interior himself.

Kubrick is careful not to specify the time of the film (roughly toward the end of the 1970s), so it becomes a kind of cautionary fable. Its violence is totally stylized, dreamlike, absurd. It is all set to music, ranging from Beethoven ("Ludwig van" is a big favorite of Alex's) to Singin' in the Rain, which Alex croons happily as he tap dances about, kicking one of his victims. Language is likewise abstracted. Alex's street slang hints at influences from Russia ("devotchka" for girl, "malchiks" for boys). Even what passes for normal language has been drastically altered, as when the Minister of the Interior says, "But enough of words--actions speak louder than. Action now. Observe all."

This kind of madhouse fantasy finally leads to a dead end, an ultimate negation. The political extremes in the film are both represented as the two sides of demagoguery. The Minister of the Interior is a kind of well tailored Goebbels, an unctuous fascist. His opposite number is a radical writer named

Alexander (Patrick Magee), who is given to saying things like "The common people must be led! Driven! Pushed!"

As Alex, Malcolm McDowell is sensational. His performance has the range and dynamism that signal the arrival of a new superstar. As for Director Kubrick, his work is stylistically almost flawless. If there was any doubt after 2001, A Clockwork Orange confirms Kubrick as our most audacious film maker. There have been many visions of a malign future on film (1984, Things to Come, Fahrenheit 451) but none quite so unsparing and so ruthlessly witty. Kubrick adapted the script himself from Burgess's book, and the intellectual symmetry of the writing is admirable.

Yet, as with the novel, there is something troublesome about the film. A Clockwork Orange does not engage us fully on an emotional level. There is something about it a little too neat and too cold. The wit is there, and the ironic perception. It is funny and it is frightening, partly because of the world it presents but also because of the dispassionate attitude it adopts toward that world. One misses a sense of grief or of rage, and finally, a portion of humanity.

He calls them, with some disdain, "your usual Kubrick anecdotes." He can even tick off, in rapid succession, the most common stories about himself. There is the grooming story: how his wardrobe consists almost exclusively of blue blazers, gray trousers, black shoes and socks, thereby ending any worry about what to wear. Then there are the stories about his mania for safety: how he will not ride in a car going more than 30 m.p.h. (unless he is behind the wheel), and how he wore a special helmet while working on some of the intricate 2001 sets.

All the stories are true, of course, but Stanley Kubrick is a man with a theoretical, not anecdotal turn of mind. He likes to talk primarily about his films. "The thing I really hate to be asked," he says, "is to explain why the film works, what I had in mind and so forth." How it works is another matter entirely. Many of the best scenes in his movies come out of what Kubrick jokingly calls the "C.R.P."--crucial rehearsal period. "In a scene that might take three days to shoot, I would probably spend till 4 o'clock the first day rehearsing and working things out. This period is one of maximum tension and anxiety, and it is precisely here where a scene lives or dies. The choice of camera angles and coverage is, by comparison, a relatively simple matter."

Ideas for changing dialogue or the business of the scene can come from the actors or from anyone else in the vicinity. Kubrick listens to every suggestion, weighs it, modifies or expands it, then makes the final choice. Dr. Strangelove's mock resurrection from his wheelchair originated in the C.R.P., as did the Singin' in the Rain sequence in A Clockwork Orange.

Kubrick began as a photojournalist (for Look, among other publications), and he retains strong influence over the visual aspect of his films. In fact, he photographed much of A Clockwork Orange himself. But he maintains that "a film set is probably the worst place ever devised for doing creative work. Shooting is the part of film making I enjoy the least. I don't particularly enjoy working with a lot of people. I'm just not an extravert."

Kubrick lives half an hour outside London in a large house that contains, besides his offices, a computer, assorted optical and editing equipment, and a Ping Pong table inside a tent on the back lawn. Three daughters, seven cats and three dogs also contribute to the air of congenial disorder. His wife Christiane (the girl who sings to the troops at the end of Paths of Glory) paints large, radiant canvases that have been shown at the Royal Academy.

After nearly a decade of living in England, Kubrick, now 43, still has more of the Bronx than of London in his voice. The tone is unmistakable, full of an uninsistent, quietly ironic humor. Ask him his plans for a new movie, and the answer comes quickly: "I think I'll do Napoleon. You know, the well-known political figure." The film will, he hopes, be the first "to deal gracefully with historical information and at the same time convey a sense of day to day reality. Most people are not aware that Napoleon spent most of his time on the eve of a battle doing paper work." Of all the film makers in the world, Kubrick is perhaps the only one who could make an epic movie out of paper work.

*An expression Burgess derived from old Cockney slang: "Queer as a clockwork orange."

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