FAQ

Because it was made in the early 70s. They really had no idea what 25 years in the future would look like. So it was essentially an exaggerated version of the 60s/70s styles.

Because Alex started going off on his own, leaving them behind. He also was abusive to them any time they questioned him. They finally turned on him when Alex shoved them in the water and he slashed one of them on the hand with a knife.

British teenager Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell), leader of a gang of "droogs"—Pete (Michael Tarn), Georgie (James Marcus), and Dim (Warren Clarke)—who spend their evenings committing "ultra-violent" crimes, is apprehended by the police, convicted of rape and murder, and sentenced to 14 years in prison. While incarcerated, Alex volunteers for the Ludovico procedure—a government-developed program that professes to cure him of his violent tendencies. However, they didn't warn Alex that the cure might be worse than the disease.

A Clockwork Orange is a novel written by English author John Burgess Wilson (pen name: Anthony Burgess) and published in 1962.

Many people assume it is set in the future largely based on inconclusive points. Alex and his droogs steal a "Derango 95", which many people assume is something like saying, "a '57 Chevy". In the book when Alex and his droogs beat up a bum, he mentions men walking on the moon, which in the context of the book's publication in 1962, would have seemed very far into the future. (Curiously, this line is retained in the movie, which was produced after the first Moon landings). However, Anthony Burgess was well known as a satirist, and many of his books (like The Right to an Answer, Devil of a State, and 1985) are satirical comments on the absurdities of the world. Given the nature of his work it is more likely this story is set in an alternate world. The "Derango 95" could follow the European practice of using numbers (a Mercedes 450), instead of names (a Ford Thunderbird), to distinguish a particular car model. The fact that teenagers would speak in a Russian slang, or listen to songs by Russian pop stars, wouldn't happen in a future Britain, but would in an alternate world. And it isn't possible that any government in the real world would sanction something as tortuous as the Ludovico procedure.

This point is made clear by Burgess in an interview published in Playboy (Sept. 1974): " It's fallacious to believe that there's such a thing as a fiction of the future. Any fiction that seems to be set in a future time is really set in the present, with a few fantastic embellishments that the writer can allow himself. ... Clockwork Orange is a satirical study of life as it was in 1960, when the tone of postwar England was socialistic, collectivist, and I was really trying to satirize that sort of world in which people had nothing to live for, had no energy--except for the young, who could do nothing with their energy but employ it to totally barbarous ends. I was really writing about the present. The then present. The now past. The future is already in the past. In Clockwork Orange, I had world telecasts and men on the moon. Of course, these things have come true; but there's nothing in the book that wasn't already present in the technology of the early Sixties, except for the use of a composite dialect called Nadsat." It's interesting to note that in the film, on the mocked up newspaper Alex's parents are reading, the front cover reports it's circulation growth from August 1969 - August 1970. This suggests that Kubrick set his version in an alternative 1970 rather than some vague 'future Britain'.

In the book, Alex is 15 years old at the beginning, 17 when he gets out of jail, and by the time of the book's end, he's 18.

The simple answer is that it is derived from an old English expression "Queer as a Clockwork Orange", meaning something very strange. In the novel, when Alex and his friends attack the writer and his wife, the writer is working on a manuscript entitled "A Clockwork Orange", but this was left out of the movie. However, in a 1986 Introduction to the first American edition of the book to contain the final chapter, Anthony Burgess says "A human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil." He goes on to say "the important thing is moral choice." When Alex cannot choose to perform good or evil (after the Ludovico treatment), he has become a clockwork orange. Burgess also states that the Malaysian word "orang" means "man" in English, so "A Clockwork Orange" means "a clockwork man", which is what Alex has become by the end of the film, figuratively.

The milk has drugs in it. If you listen closely, Alex names all the drugs during the opening scene: "The Korova Milk Bar sells Milk Plus: milk plus synthemesc, vellocet, or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This will sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence." You can also see the names of the drugs spelled out on the walls of the Bar behind them in the first shot. Novelist Anthony Burgess has stated that Alex drinking milk is symbolic of his infantile, child-like nature. "Synthemesc" is synthetic mescaline; "vellocet" is methedrine/speed, and "drencrom" is adrenochrome, all very powerful drugs which would cause the user to lose impulse control. Both mescaline and adrenochrome act as hallucinogens, and in addition, adrenochrome can amplify the effects of methedrine, making them the perfect additives for ultra-violence.

It's called Nadsat. It's a language the author made up for the book, largely comprised of phonetically pronounced Russian words. The word nadsat itself is the Russian suffix for "-teen". Burgess was a linguist, and aware of the evolution of slang, did not want Alex and his Droogs to use (then) contemporary slang terms for fear of the book becoming dated. He used his knowledge of Russian to create the imaginary street-jargon used by the gangs as a way of ensuring that this would not happen. When the book was translated into Russian, the Russian words were replaced with their English counterparts; ironically, at the time, the Russian subculture equivalent to American hippies already spoke in a similar jargon, giving the book another (albeit unintentional) layer. Early American mass-market paperback editions of the book had a nadsat glossary in the back. The newer trade-paperback edition eliminated the glossary.

Some people don't believe there is one, but most believe when Alex listens to Beethoven in his room after the rape, he's masturbating. In the book, it's made clear he's naked during this part, but he also says that his hands were behind his head. McDowell's commentary track on the 2007 DVD release sheds a bit more light on this issue: He mentions that he wasn't masturbating and that it wasn't Kubrick's intention. Malcolm says that he was just taking his boots off, hence the movement of his shoulders. However, it can still be implied that Alex was gratifying himself.

Alex calls the car a "Durango '95" but it's actually a 1970 M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16. The car was one of only three prototypes built and is one of the rarest cars in the world.

It has been written in the past that Malcolm McDowell nearly drowned in the trough scene, where his former droogs, Georgie and Dim, dunk him into an animal trough filled with dirty water and beat him with a nightstick for nearly a minute of screen time. The rumour was that McDowell's breathing apparatus failed. This isn't true. In the Warner Brothers DVD, McDowell does a commentary track and talks about how he used an oxygen tank while he was under the water. He never mentions that it failed or that he almost drowned. Also on one of the documentaries on the DVD, the commentator mentions that McDowell did 28 takes of that scene, so the tank must have been working.

What is true is that the water was colored brown with a special food additive derived from beef production and that McDowell found it really noxious to work in.

Despite the newspapers giving his last name as "Burgess," it appears that "Alexander DeLarge" is his real name. While some viewers believe Alex to be mocking the prison authorities by giving this as his name, both Mr. Alexander and the Minister of the Interior refer to him as "Mr. DeLarge" at various points in the film, indicating that this is his real name. The "Burgess" seen in newspapers was simply an inside joke by Kubrick, a reference to Anthony Burgess.

No. Julian (David Prowse) is just there because Frank Alexander was afraid to be alone after the rape and death of his wife. Julian was a bodyguard as well as a helpmate strong enough to carry him in his wheelchair. According to Prowse, he and Patrick Magee were not told specifically by Kubrick what their relationship was, so they played it under the assumption that Julian was a close relative, possibly Alexander's nephew.

Contrary to popular belief, A Clockwork Orange was never banned in the UK. The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) classified it as an X-rating in 1971. When first released, many people in Britain were disgusted by the film as the sexual violence was considered to be extreme. Throughout 1972 and 1973, several violent crimes in Britain were said to be influenced by the film. These included an old man beaten to death in an underpass, a sixteen year old boy wearing Alex's uniform beating up a younger boy and a young woman raped by men chanting 'Singing in the Rain'. With pressure on director Stanley Kubrick to ban the film, Kubrick withdrew A Clockwork Orange from British cinemas in 1973. He said that the film would only be allowed to be seen after his death. During the 1980s and '90s, the only way in which British fans could see the film was if they ordered it on VHS from other countries, usually France. In 1993, the Scala Cinema club in London screened the film without Kubrick's permission. At Kubrick's insistence, Warner Bros sued the Scala club causing them to become bankrupt and eventually close. Stanley Kubrick died in 1999 and the movie was re-classified with an 18-rating by the BBFC. A Clockwork Orange was eventually re-released in British cinemas in 2000 and released on VHS and DVD in the UK later that year.

At the time it was released, the ratings system was quite different than it is now. The only ratings were "G (General)", "M (Mature)", "R (Restricted)", and "X" (extreme or crossing the line). "M" and "R" were roughly synonymous—both denoted "adult" content, with anyone being admitted to M-rated films and R-rated films requiring an adult to accompany anyone under 16 years old. X-rated films were those considered "too extreme" for anyone under 16, and denoted that theaters were not to permit anyone under the age of 16 even with a guardian. To this end, the sexual violence featured in the first thirty minutes of the film, and the "Ludovico Treatment" rape footage, were considered too graphic for anyone under 16 to see, hence the "X" rating. Because the X rating was not copyrighted by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), it could be used by any film distributor, and the adult film industry began to self-rate its own films "X" in order to avoid having to submit them to the MPAA for rating and face the films being banned outright due to anti-pornography laws in the early 1970s. Soon, the "X" became a marketing tool for the pornography industry, with (imaginary) ratings of XX and XXX being given to adult films by their producers to denote levels of sexual "extremity." In response, the MPAA, for all intents and purposes, ceased using the X rating for non-pornographic films; A Clockwork Orange and Midnight Cowboy, two mainstream films which had been given the X rating for sexually explicit content (only to win rave critical reviews) were summarily re-rated R without any changes made to their content. In 1972, the "M" rating was replaced by "PG", marking a clearer middle-ground between "G" and "R" than the "M" rating had indicated. (Trivia: The MPAA's NC-17 rating ["No Children 17 years old or younger"] has more or less come to supplant the uncopyrighted X rating.)

The person drawn is Alex, and he is holding his britva (razor). And he is leaning through an enlarged "A" (to complete the title "A Clockwork Orange") with a removed eye as a cufflink (you can spot it throughout the movie) in the same hand as the razor. In the arch below the "A" is one of the Korova Milkbar mannequins.

"Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary" by Henry Purcell, adapted by Wendy Carlos - This is heard during the films opening titles; it is played again immediately after the rape scene at the beginning; also when the topless girl appears before Alex onstage and when the police (his former droogs) beat him up. Listen here. There is a second version that is played when Alex returns to his parent's apartment towards the beginning. The second version is heard again when the newspaper headlines are shown regarding Alex's suicide attempt. Listen here.

"La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie)" by Gioachino Rossini - This is played when Alex and his droogs have the rumble with Billyboy and take their drive in the country. It is also heard when Alex knocks Dim, and Georgie into the lake and when the droogs break into the catlady's home. Listen here.

"9th symphony, 2nd movement" by Ludwig van Beethoven - This is the music Alex plays in his room. Listen here. An adapted electronic (suicide scherzo) version is also played in the writer's home just before Alex attempts suicide. Listen here.

"9th symphony, 4th movement" by Ludwig van Beethoven - This adapted electronic version is heard when Alex is in the music store talking with the two girls and is played again during the Ludovico technique when he has his catharsis. Listen here. Another orchestral/choral segment is heard at the end when the newspaper photographers come to take pictures of him at the hospital. Listen here.

"William Tell Overture" by Gioachino Rossini - An adapted electronic version is played during the threesome in Alex's bedroom. Listen here. An orchestral segment of it is played when Alex is informed by his parent's that his old room has been rented out to a boarder and his snake has died. Listen here.

"Scheherazade: The Story of the Kalandar Prince" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Played during Alex's biblical fantasy.

"Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major" by Edward Elgar - This is heard when the minister of the interior visits the prison. Listen here.

"Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4 in G major" by Edward Elgar - This is played when Alex is taken to the Ludovico facility by the prison guard. Listen here.

"Timesteps" by Wendy Carlos - This is heard during Alex's first session of the Ludovico technique. Listen here.

"Overture to the Sun" by Terry Tucker - This is played during the stage demonstration where Alex is assaulted by a man and made to lick his shoe. Listen here.

"I Want to Marry A Lighthouse Keeper" by Erika Eigen - This is heard when Alex returns home to his parent's apartment after being released from state custody. Listen here.

"Singin' in the Rain" by Nacio Herb Brown, performed by Gene Kelly - This is played during the closing credits. Listen here.

The times and scenes these songs were played in the movie can be found at "what-song".

Yes, the original movie poster features a naked woman—the statue of the Korova Milk Bar. For the American poster the woman is wearing bra and panties. Later on this statue was completely removed.