A Clockwork Orange - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of A Clockwork Orange or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to A Clockwork Orange

[ronnie]

When offered the part of Alex, Malcolm McDowell mistakenly thought the director was Stanley Kramer. It wasn't until McDowell's friend Lindsay Anderson showed him Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) that the actor realised who the director was.

[violet]

The film took heavy inspiration from If.... (1968) one of Stanley Kubrick's all-time favorite films.

[violet]

Malcolm McDowell is actually urinating in the toilet scene early in the film, when he goes home and prepares for bed. He drank a lot of coffee before filming the shot.

[aaron]

According to author Anthony Burgess, the title of the book (and the movie) came from East London slang, deriving from the phrase, "as queer as a clockwork orange." No independent references are known, however, and it is thought that Burgess invented the phrase himself.

[dustin]

The title was translated into Serbo-Croatian as "The Orange From Hell" ("Paklena Naranca" - Croatian, "Paklena Pomorandza" - Serbian). This comes from the term for clockwork bombs - "Paklena Masina" - "Machine from hell." The Italian title was Arancia Meccanica, and the French title was "Orange mécanique". Anthony Burgess felt that these translations were misleading as they suggested a hand grenade, whereas his title meant a natural creature transformed into a machine.

[marc]

Film Critic Gene Siskel interviewed Kubrick after Clockwork Orange came out and all the furor happened; the film was banned; Kubrick himself was threatened; and the film became one of the most controversial ever made. Gene Siskel asked if Alex Delarge was a villain: Kubrick said "it is inappropriate to talk about the characters in ''A Clockwork Orange'' as heroes and villains. The film is satire," he said. Siskel went on to talk about Kubrick's world view; and the widespread belief because of movies like Clockwork Orange and The Shining that he hates people; that he's a dark, cynical misanthrope: "''You don't have to make Frank Capra movies to like people,'' Kubrick said. ''Capra presents a view of life as we all wish it really were. But I think you can still present a darker picture of life without disliking the human race. And I think Frank Capra movies are wonderful. And I wish life were like most any one of them. And I wish everybody were like Jimmy Stewart. But they're not.''

[nina]

Before he would famously go on to portray Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, David Prowse had his first "big break" by being cast in this film. Coincidentally, James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader), had his first big break in another Stanley Kubrick film: as Lt Lothar Zogg in 'Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' (1964).

[linda]

Malcolm McDowell and the cast and crew had thought the film they were making was a black comedy when the film was shooting.

[kim]

When Malcolm McDowell met Gene Kelly at a party several years later, the older star turned and walked away in disgust. Kelly was deeply upset about the way his signature from "Singin' in the Rain (1952)" had been portrayed in "A Clockwork Orange (1971)."

[dustin]

Stanley Kubrick was so impressed by Jörg Pleva, the voice actor who dubbed Alex in the German language version, that he sent a letter to dialogue director Wolfgang Staudte. In the letter, Kubrick expressed his fascination to the voice of Jörg Pleva and admitted that it suited the character even more than Malcolm McDowell's voice. Pleva was later personally selected by Kubrick to provide the German voice for Ryan O'Neal in Barry Lyndon (1975) and Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1980).

[alyssa]

Filming the rape scene was so difficult for the actress originally cast in the role that she quit. The part was recast with Adrienne Corri, who was said to have been furious at the large number of takes that Stanley Kubrick required, feeling it ought to have been done swiftly. Malcolm McDowell, however, has stated that Corri was very "game" about the brief but difficult role throughout filming.

[sylvia]

The novel and the film end very differently. The theme in the film is dark and evil, as Alex goes back to his old ultra violent ways. As for the novel, Alex indeed resumes a violent life, but that isn't the ending. Eventually, Alex genuinely wants to stop being a menace to society, to get a wife and live like a good citizen.

[oscar]

Stanley Kubrick: [Alcohol] Alex drinking the 1960 Chateau.

[eli]

Recently a follow up to A Clockwork Orange was found in Anthony Burgess' home, called A Clockwork Condition. It's an unfinished 200 page manuscript that expands upon the themes in the original.

[bernice]

The film was released just over a year after principal photography began, the fastest film shot, edited and released by Stanley Kubrick.

[edgar]

The book never tells us Alex's last name. He nicknames himself Alexander the Large while raping the music-loving girls. Malcolm McDowell ad libbed the name "DeLarge," a pun on "the Large," in "Scene 15," registry into prison, which is original to Stanley Kubrick and not in the novel. A continuity error occurs when a caption in "Scene 31," hospital, perhaps filmed earlier, gives Alex's last name as Burgess after Anthony Burgess. His full name is given as Alex Burgess in a number of the newspaper articles seen after his (coerced) suicide attempt.

[frances]

Fashion designer and publisher of fetish magazine AtomAge John Sutcliffe, with artist Allen Jones, designed some explicit waitresses' uniforms for the film which were ultimately unused. The sexualised Korova Milkbar sculptures were inspired - but not created - by Jones, who had been asked by Stanley Kubrick to contribute to the film. Jones refused as there would only be a credit, not a fee, for this work.

[jessica]

The society depicted in the film was perceived by some as Communist (as Michel Ciment pointed out in an interview with Stanley Kubrick) due to its slight ties to Russian culture. The teenage slang has a heavily Russian influence, as in the novel; Anthony Burgess explains the slang as being, in part, intended to draw a reader into the world of the book's characters and to prevent the book from becoming outdated. There is some evidence to suggest that the society is a socialist one, or perhaps a society evolving from a failed socialism into a fully fascist society. In the novel, streets have paintings of working men in the style of Russian socialist art, and in the film, there is a mural of socialist artwork with obscenities drawn on it. As Malcolm McDowell points out on the DVD commentary, Alex's residence was shot on failed Labour Party architecture, and the name "Municipal Flat Block 18A, Linear North" alludes to socialist-style housing. Later in the film, when the new right-wing government takes power, the atmosphere is certainly more authoritarian than the anarchist air of the beginning. Kubrick's response to Ciment's question remained ambiguous as to exactly what kind of society it is. Kubrick asserted that the film held comparisons between both the left and right end of the political spectrum and that there is little difference between the two. Kubrick stated, "The Minister, played by Anthony Sharp, is clearly a figure of the Right. The writer, Patrick Magee, is a lunatic of the Left... They differ only in their dogma. Their means and ends are hardly distinguishable."

[RafaelDet]

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