Stanley Kubrick’s 1970s: A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon

General wisdom has it that Stanley Kubrick grew more cynical as he matured as a filmmaker. His two feature films from the 1970s certainly support that view.

When I talk to people about movies, which is often, I get the overall vibe that older flicks are considered quaint and rather tame by modern standards. That definitely wasn’t the case back in the ’70s, and 1971 was a particularly provocative year for cinema.

Dirty Harry was calling out punks with his hand cannon and stomping all over their rights, and Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright exposed the primitive underbelly of the Australian outback while turning stomachs with its grisly kangaroo hunt. The Blood on Satan’s Claw, Piers Haggard’s middle entry in folk horror’s Unholy Trinity, disturbed viewers with its depiction of child sexual assault, and even venerable old Hollywood studios were causing nightmares for the censors.

20th Century Fox released Straw Dogs, Sam Peckinpah’s tense and nasty home invasion thriller, but its cut scenes of sexual violence remained unavailable for decades. Warner Bros. went one better by distributing Ken Russell’s The Devils, but, spooked by its supposedly blasphemous content, has refused to release the director’s cut to this day.

Warners also got into hot water with Catholic censors by releasing Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. In Britain, it was passed X uncut by the BBFC. In the United States, it initially went out with an X rating, while the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures gave it a “C” for Condemned. Circumstances outside the film soon gave it a lasting notoriety that would outlive the director himself.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Author Anthony Burgess took inspiration from a harrowing real-life experience for A Clockwork Orange. Burgess later said that, during World War II, his first wife Lynne was assaulted by drunken American servicemen, an ordeal he associated with the loss of their unborn child. That violent incident became the seed for Burgess’s most famous novel, an examination of free will that charts the exploits of Alex DeLarge, a 15-year-old tearaway who delights in rape and “ultra-violence” with his gang of Droogs.

Set in a dystopian Britain, the novel is a dazzling tour de force written entirely in Nadsat, Burgess’s invented language blending Russian-inflected slang with Cockney, schoolboy talk and other linguistic oddities. It was a brave choice, challenging the reader to learn the lingo as they go along. This writing style also insulates us from the book’s more extreme episodes - perhaps as a result, Burgess’s novel received little in the way of censorship until after Kubrick’s film version caused controversy.

If the trauma suffered by Burgess’s wife was the inciting incident for the novel, it was Kubrick’s third spouse Christiane who had a big hand in getting it to the screen under far less trying circumstances. After completing 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick was readying himself for another mammoth film, a grandiose biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte that he’d been working on since the early ’60s. Wrapped up in developing his dream project, Kubrick didn’t have time to read the copy of A Clockwork Orange handed to him by Terry Southern. Christiane read it, however, and urged her husband to take a look at the earliest opportunity. Once he did, Kubrick was blown away.

I was excited by everything about it: the plot, the ideas, the characters, and, of course, the language. The story functions, of course, on several levels: political, sociological, philosophical, and, what’s most important, on a dreamlike psychological-symbolic level.

Napoleon was ready to start filming in 1969 with Jack Nicholson lined up to play the French emperor before MGM pulled the plug, allowing Kubrick to turn his attention to adapting Burgess’s novel. Crucially, the filmmaker based his screenplay on the shorter American edition of the book, which omitted a slightly more positive final chapter. This would make a big difference to how the movie would play out, altering the message and the film’s lasting impact.

By Kubrick’s usual standards, A Clockwork Orange was a quickie. Filming started in September 1970 and wrapped in April the following year, making it the fastest shoot of his career. That relative expedience certainly suited the material. After the epic visual symphony of 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange brims over with a bolshy, swaggering energy that matches the amoral brio of its antihero and our “humble narrator” Alex.

For the lead, Kubrick chose Malcolm McDowell on the basis of his startling debut in Lindsay Anderson’s acerbic public school drama If… The young actor carried much of the same cocksure otherness and ironic contempt into the part, summed up by that lop-sided leer and his scornful eyes peering out from under the brim of his bowler hat in the opening scene. This look would become known as the “Kubrick stare”, a motif repeated in later films like The Shining and Full Metal Jacket as a character gazes directly into the camera to convey menace and madness.

A Clockwork Orange quickly developed a reputation for shocking violence, although there are only a handful of scenes, mostly confined to the film’s first act: Alex and his Droogs savagely beating a homeless man; engaging in a choreographed punch-up with a rival gang; invading the home of an author and sexually assaulting his wife; and Alex bludgeoning a wealthy “cat lady” to death with a phallic sculpture.

The latter two scenes, particularly the sexual assault as Alex croons “Singin’ in the Rain” while beating and stripping his victims, are more disturbing because of the tone of the film. Kubrick takes a highly stylised approach ranging from the costumes and the production design to the musical choices, most notably a jaunty electronic version of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Combined with McDowell’s smirking delivery, the early scenes charting his rampage take on a broadly comic note that sits at odds with the choreographed violence on display. A more serious approach might still have been shocking, but making it comical puts us uncomfortably into Alex’s mindset as he invites us to tag along.

A Clockwork Orange takes a sharp turn around the 45-minute mark after Alex is betrayed by his Droogs following the Cat Lady attack and receives a 14-year sentence for murder. This is where we get the philosophical meat of the film as the focus switches from the violence of individuals to the violence of the state against the individual.

Once behind bars, Alex is reduced to his prison number and subjected to barking authority before he sees a way out: the Minister of the Interior (Anthony Sharp) is tasked with reducing crime and seeks volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy called the Ludovico technique. Alex puts himself forward and spends an excruciating two weeks strapped into a chair with his eyes clamped open, forced to watch scenes of sex and violence while his beloved Ludwig van Beethoven plays.

As a result of the technique, Alex feels physically sick whenever he feels his old violent urges arise. The Minister declares the experiment a success and Alex is released, meek and unable to defend himself back in the real world. A shadow of his former self, he’s kicked out by his parents, victimised at every turn, and eventually attempts suicide. Once the papers get hold of the story, there is an intense public backlash against the brainwashing technique, forcing the government to hastily reverse the treatment as an arse-covering exercise. On the road to recovery, the film concludes with Alex fantasising about sex to Beethoven’s Ninth.

Kubrick believed that humankind is innately geared towards violence, something that he explored from different angles in his two previous pictures, Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey. He said:

Man isn’t a noble savage, he’s an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved… and any attempt to create social institutions based on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.

A Clockwork Orange gave him an opportunity to explore his thesis from another perspective: if you deny a person the freedom to commit evil deeds, does that remove an essential part of their humanity? Would removing their free will to choose between good and evil be more evil than leaving them to act upon their darkest impulses?

The longer UK edition of Burgess’s novel concluded with a chapter in which Alex, now older and wiser, swears off violence of his own accord. By basing his screenplay on the shorter version, with a joyous scene suggesting Alex is restored to his wicked but entirely autonomous old ways, Kubrick puts himself firmly on the side of free will despite our baked-in savage tendencies. Furthermore, he felt that using tools and techniques to alter people’s behaviour could be a dangerous weapon in the hands of a totalitarian government.

Over half a century later, the anxiety still feels current. We may not have the Ludovico technique, but we do live with systems designed to shape behaviour: algorithms that keep us scrolling, feeds that learn our weaknesses, and platforms that can steadily alter what people see, believe and fear. Kubrick’s concern about behavioural engineering in the hands of power now feels less like science fiction than a warning we have slowly normalised.

As a movie-loving teen in the ’90s, there were certain banned movies that developed a cult reputation precisely because you couldn’t watch them legally. Bootleg tapes only added to the mythos. Mostly this was down to the draconian “video nasty” panic of the 1980s, when dozens of films were prosecuted, seized, refused certificates or cut to ribbons in the name of protecting UK audiences.

A Clockwork Orange was a different story, however. While it screened in other countries without any problems, the film chimed differently in Britain. Kubrick received death threats after the media linked a spate of violent copycat incidents to the film, not least a sexual assault in which the attackers paraphrased “Singin’ in the Rain” as “Singin’ in the Rape.”

A display of headlines from The Stanley Kubrick Exhibition, The London Design Museum

The unwanted notoriety prompted Kubrick to withdraw his own film from release in the United Kingdom, although he rejected the notion that art could be held responsible for influencing people’s actions:

To try and fasten any responsibility on art as the cause of life seems to me to put the case the wrong way around. Art consists of reshaping life, but it does not create life, nor cause life. Furthermore, to attribute powerful suggestive qualities to a film is at odds with the scientifically accepted view that, even after deep hypnosis in a posthypnotic state, people cannot be made to do things which are at odds with their natures.

It was an argument that was pondered over by critics and rumbled on in the British media throughout the video nasty era, most notably in the case of the James Bulger murder in 1993, a horrific crime that resulted in the moral panic around the relatively innocuous Child’s Play 3.

Kubrick stuck to his guns regarding A Clockwork Orange, adding to the film’s scandalous infamy over the years. It was only re-released theatrically and made available on home media after the filmmaker passed away in March 1999. I recall the sense of trepidation when I finally got to watch it — would it really be as bad as its reputation suggested? I was vaguely disappointed in that respect, but also saddened that the film had been withheld for so long.

Viewed more than a quarter of a century after UK audiences could finally get their hands on it again, A Clockwork Orange is a minor masterpiece from Kubrick. The central dilemma about free will is interesting to chew over, but the film doesn’t offer much psychological depth of its own. It’s all played at the same relentless key of ironic amusement, relying on the viewer to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to thrashing out the themes. I’m all for a movie trusting an audience’s intelligence, but the film always leaves me feeling a little undernourished despite the thought-provoking premise and formidable stylistic flash.

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Moving on then to Barry Lyndon, a film that is the polar opposite of A Clockwork Orange in terms of setting, pacing and vibe, but one that also observes an irredeemable young man from Kubrick’s typically fatalistic viewpoint.

Adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon, we start off in 18th-century Ireland where we meet Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal), a naive yet hot-tempered young man who goes on the run after shooting his love rival in a duel. His adventures take him to Germany where he serves in the British Army during the Seven Years’ War. After deserting while impersonating an officer, his cover is blown and he ends up fighting for the Prussian forces instead.

Coveting status and riches, blind circumstance allows the roguish chancer to achieve his goal once the war is over. He falls in with Chevalier de Balibari (Patrick Magee, returning from A Clockwork Orange), an Irish gambler suspected of being a spy, an alliance that gains him access to European high society.

He meets Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson), a distant and beautiful noblewoman, and marries her with designs on her previous husband’s title and wealth. Having finally reached the upper echelons of society, however, fundamental flaws in Redmond’s character bring about his lengthy and ignominious downfall.

Kubrick secured a budget that eventually rose to around $11 million to make Barry Lyndon. That might sound like a snip nowadays, but back then it was a huge sum, more than the budget of Jaws and several times the cost of many other major films from 1975. Kubrick had reached a stage in his career where he had attained the full freedom of an arthouse filmmaker, but one successful enough commercially to leverage a massive wedge of Warner Bros. money. And it’s certainly a film that looks like $11 million on the screen.

Using much of the historical research he’d done for his unrealised Napoleon project, Kubrick spent months developing the Barry Lyndon screenplay and shot the film mostly on location in Ireland, England and Germany. To peer back into the Age of Enlightenment with unerring authenticity, he used the very latest technology: specially modified Zeiss f/0.7 lenses originally developed for NASA’s lunar programme, which enabled him and cinematographer John Alcott to shoot some interiors by candlelight without conventional artificial lighting.

Taking inspiration from 18th-century artists like Thomas Gainsborough, William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds and other painters of the period, Kubrick’s attention to detail was obsessive. Poring over hundreds of paintings and sketches in art books, he accumulated a huge dossier that allowed him to recreate every aspect from fashions and wigs to furniture and vehicles. Kubrick’s Oscar-winning costume designers, Milena Canonero and Ulla-Britt Söderlund, even wrangled some genuine items of 18th-century clothing for use in the film.

The result is one of the most beautiful historical epics ever captured on celluloid, and its languorous pace allows the viewer to fully absorb the vast landscapes and stately interiors. If anything, the film is even more breathtaking from a modern viewpoint. We’ve become so inured to actors green-screened against curiously shallow and obviously computer-generated backgrounds that Kubrick’s outdoor shots feel revelatory. Just watching finely costumed characters walking in a masterfully composed landscape where you can see for miles feels incredibly immersive, a special effect of a lovingly analogue kind.

Having said all that, Barry Lyndon keeps the viewer at a great arm’s length dramatically. As Roger Ebert noted, it is a film that almost defies the viewer to reject it. Thackeray’s novel could’ve easily formed the basis of a lusty bodice-ripping adventure, but Kubrick turned it into a mirthless three-hour satire that deliberately distances us from the action and the characters.

Casting Ryan O’Neal in the lead role is symptomatic of this approach. Redmond Barry is a vacuous social climber driven only by self-interest, an opportunist who things happen to, stumbling upwards at each turn until eventually his avarice brings about his downfall. Never the most expressive of Hollywood actors, O’Neal’s handsome blandness repels any possibility of identifying with the character, and we watch him more out of anthropological curiosity than involvement in his rise and fall.

Challenging our engagement even further, Kubrick also boldly reveals just about every major plot point ahead of time. Switching from Redmond’s perspective in the novel to a tongue-in-cheek narration by Michael Hordern - the voice of Paddington Bear - we’re told well in advance what is about to happen, limiting our involvement in the story.

Due to its length and detached storytelling, Barry Lyndon was coolly received by many critics and its box office return was only really rescued on the European arthouse circuit on its first release. Since then, the film has become regarded as the pinnacle of Kubrick’s distinctive style, an appreciation emphasised by the director’s ascent to his present revered status.

Unlike the baleful red eye of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey or the menacing gaze of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, the viewpoint in Barry Lyndon is clearly Kubrick’s at his most omniscient. But what is the point of making a film that deliberately tries to thwart the audience’s engagement?

I freely admit that I got fed up and switched off Barry Lyndon about halfway through when I first tried watching it several years ago. This time around, I was galvanised by a quote from Letterboxd - sadly I can’t remember the movie or the author - that I think about a lot when it comes to arthouse films. It was something like: “You keep waiting for something to happen, then you realise it’s been happening the whole time.”

That is regularly the case with arthouse cinema. Usually working independently with small budgets, arthouse filmmakers aren’t bound by the same restrictions as a director at the helm of a $150 million blockbuster, who might be compelled by the studio to keep the audience clued up at all times and throw in an action sequence every 15 minutes to make sure they’re still awake. Often an arthouse film is more like a jigsaw, with the whole picture only appreciable when the auteur inserts the last piece and completes their vision.

Watching Barry Lyndon is like completing one of those massive 1000-piece puzzles and sitting back to admire your dedication. Kubrick was not concerned by anything as trivial as providing mere entertainment. Having matured as a filmmaker, his feelings about the nature of humankind had hardened into something more cynical: we are creatures addicted to violence, greed, cruelty and vainglorious folly during our brief time on Earth, and we are hard-wired to repeat the same behaviours over and over again throughout the centuries.

It’s an unsettling perspective that spikes every scene of A Clockwork Orange and finds its purest form in Barry Lyndon. But there is always the astonishing craft and the matter-of-fact wisdom in a Kubrick film, and a consolatory message also emerges. We are also self-aware and able to make sense of our fallibility by turning it into great art.

For collectors, the contrast between these two films is also part of the appeal. A Clockwork Orange produced some of the boldest and most notorious poster imagery of the 1970s, while Barry Lyndon asked its campaign to sell something far quieter: beauty, irony and the slow collapse of a man who thinks status will save him. You can explore our current original Stanley Kubrick movie posters here.

Next time: Stanley Kubrick upsets Stephen King by adapting The Shining into something very different to the novel.