Reviews/Sound Bites

The Audio Book | The Novel | The Movie

The Audio Book

"Anthony Burgess reads chapters of his novel A Clockwork Orange with hair-raising drive and energy." - The New York Times

"Too short! Why couldn't he have read the whole novel - left me hungry for more." - Alex Thrawn www.malcolmmcdowell.net

The Novel

"I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language as Mr. Burgess has done here-the fact that this is also a very funny book may pass unnoticed." - William S. Burroughs

"The greatest novel ever written." - Alex Thrawn www.malcolmmcdowell.net

"A terrifying and marvelous book." - Ronald Dahl

"Mr. Burgess has written a fine farrago of outrageousness." - Kingsley Amis, Observer

"Mr. Burgess has written a gleeful celebration-denunciation of violence." Anne Duchene, Guardian

"Mr. Burgess is a formidably talented writer." - Queen Magazine

The Movie

"Still as fresh 30 years later as it was on the first day. One of the only perfect films ever made. Influences everyone it touches." - Alex Thrawn www.malcolmmcdowell.net 2001

"What on earth induced our censors to pass these startling scenes of rape and violence?... You could have understood a shoddy director dragging them in to gloss over his technical deficiencies, but there are no technical deficiencies about Stanley Kubrick and his film is far too good to need bolstering up with such repellent shock tactics." - Cecil Wilson, Daily Mail 1972

"Kubrick seems to be conducting a detailed investigation into the social, political, scientific and psychological control mechanisms functioning in contemporary man, and in the society that he has created. Nothing less." - Tony Palmer, Spectator 1972

"Let me report simply that A Clockwork Orange manifests itself on the screen as a painless, bloodless and ultimately pointless futuristic fantasy." - Andrew Sarris, Village Voice 1972

"The belief that our children will reproduce us is what has kept the race going, but seeing Clockwork Orange one's faith is blasted. From it one brings away the fear that our children will kill us all." - Alexander Walker, London Evening Standard 1972

"It is not a film the memory of which you will exactly wish to cherish. You may even, like me, reject the glib and icy pessimism of its message. But you will, I can assure you, find it difficult to put out of mind." - Derek Malcolm, Guardian 1972

Best film of the year. Best director of the year. - New York Film Critics' Awards 1971

"It can be said, without question, that Kubrick is the country's most important film-maker, fit to stand on a pedestal beside Europe's best, Bergman and Fellini". - Hollis Alpert, Saturday Review 1971

"It is brilliant, a tour de force of extraordinary images, music, words and feelings. 'A Clockwork Orange' is so beautiful to look at and to hear that it dazzles the senses and the mind. Makes real and important the kind of fears simply exploited by other, much lesser films. An essentially British nightmare in its attentions to caste, manners, accents and the state of mind created by a kind of weary socialism... A Clockwork Orange is so beautiful to look at and to hear that it dazzles the senses and the mind, even as it turns the old real red vino to ice." - Vincent Canby, New York Times 1971

"If there was any doubt after '2001', 'A Clockwork Orange' confirms Kubrick as our most audacious film maker. His work is stylistically almost flawless." - Jay Cocks, TIME 1971

"The best film of the year. It is in his total vision that Kubrick's mastery of every phase of his art is displayed in bravura style." - Judith Christ, New York Magazine 1971

"The much discussed violence? Don't worry about it...do not be put off by all the hoo-ha. Go along and see it - it really is wild - and, you will feel left out of an awful lot of conversations if you don't." - Susie Eisenhuth, The Australian Sunday Telegraph 1971

"'A Clockwork Orange' is one of the few perfect movies I have seen in my lifetime." - Rex Reed, New York Sunday Times 1971

"Some movies are so inventive and powerful that they can be viewed again and again and each time yield up fresh illuminations. Stanley Kubrick's, 'A Clockwork Orange,' is such a movie". - TIME 1971

"A Clockwork Orange is as very nearly perfect as any film can be. Aesthetically, intellectually, as entertainment it is stupendous. Kubrick is a champion of rationality and the potential for utopia that lies therein". - Michael Tuchman, The Yale Daily News 1972

"Disturbing, violent and visionary tale of a society out of control that focuses on the story of a sadistic young punk (McDowell) who, in the name of rehabilitation, is forced to undergo an equally disturbing and violent "cure." Filmed with cold, clinical distance by Kubrick, the film, even more than 20 years after it was made, remains a potently graphic satire on both violence and society's response to violence. Adapted from Anthony Burgess' novel." - TV Guide to Films 1993

"The kind of tour de force of the intellect and imagination that marks Kubrick as a true genius of the cinema..". - Paul D. Zimmerman, Newsweek

"Tomorrow's violence - the film shocker to end them all. Are we headed for an ultra-violent society where sex and terror gangs rule the streets, and where law-and-order becomes the most important political issue? Stanley Kubrick's amazing film "A Clockwork Orange" which rocked the world,
and was voted best film of the year by the New York film critics, deals with this question." - Early poster teaser 1971

"A chilling classic." -- Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle

"A brilliant, darkly poetic work that is able to both enrapture and disgust." - James Brundage, filmcritic.com

"Although you feel you must look away and catch your breath, your eyes are glued to the screen." - Matt Easterbrook, Matt's Movie Reviews

"Real horrorshow, that." - Dan Jardine, Apollo Guide

"Diverting and ... was not the fully blown fest of nastiness that I was expecting." - Ross Thompson, Phantom Tollbooth

"At once [Kubrick's] most thematically problematic film and his most unforgettably sensational." - Michael Atkinson, Village Voice

"It demands thought, compels the attention, and refuses to be dismissed." - James Berardinelli,  James Berardinelli's Reelviews

"McDowell has the power and slyness of a young Cagney." - Pauline Kael 1972

Trey Parker of South park said ACO is his favorite Kubrick film. 2001

"...A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is still potent and though-provoking..." Los Angeles Times - Steve Emmons (07/15/99)

"...CLOCKWORK is a movie about movies -- and sex and power and music and Sovietism -- that works as a head trip by driving for the gut. Consider it Kubrick's most surrealistic feat..." Entertainment Weekly - Entertainment Weekly Staff (06/13/03)

"...It still shocks....Provocative..." Total Film - Nick Clark (12/01/00)

"...[The film] remains every bit as tantalizing as it ever was..." Sight and Sound - Dan Leigh (10/01/00)

"[Featuring] the multiple charms of McDowell's performance." Premiere - (04/01/04)

This format © 2001-08 by Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net

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