Anyone who attempts to write a book on the film director Stanley Kubrick as I
have just done, resembles the cosmonaut in 2001: a space odyssey who gets
sucked into a new dimension.
It is exhilarating and exhausting. For Kubrick is enigmatic as the monoliths
that kept appearing and disappearing in that film; and, although he has made his
home in England for nearly 10 years now, he is almost as elusive as the
monoliths. A black beard crept down his shirt front over the last year of work
on his new film, A Clockwork Orange: above it, the eyes glitter darkly
and move restlessly.
Something in his unpampered self-sufficiency makes one think of a hermit -
though in this case it is not a hermit who has foresworn the world, but one who
uses the media he lives by to keep in touch with the world, but on his terms and
always at a distance.
Movies, television, the air mails, short-wave radio and the telephone are there
to link this extraordinary man, at his choice, with the world outside the
rambling house in Chekovian-English style that is his home and work-base.
A dozen times I have been talking to him and his wrist alarm would buzz
imperiously, intimating that someone, somewhere, was waiting to call him or hear
from him.
His quest for information is insatiable and communications are central to his
life and indeed his inspiration.
The visitors who come to his home, set behind gates encrusted with verboten
notices guarding his privacy, find themselves driven to the wall by a hail of
queries about some topic currently possessing Kubrick's interest. Not
inappropriately, it is like a military debriefing.
He is fanatical in preparing each film he makes, For one, I recall, which
involved shooting on location near London, he used maps of the in-coming flight
paths at the nearby airport - and even allowed for a change in wind direction!
Kubrick's home, where he life with his wife, Suzanne Christian, a talented
artist and their three children, is also his workplace: his life-style is a
reversion to the medieval artisan's custom of letting family life interact with
his trade or craft.
At a minute's notice, the opportunity for leading a quieter life in England than
Hollywood or New York could supply can be transformed into furious activity that
keeps him up working 16 hours a day if need be.
He is an insatiable film viewer, screening features at his home cinema one after
the other: together we took in most of the propaganda and many of the feature
films made in Nazi Germany: partly because they tied in with his fascination
with the way that film absorbs, stimulates and influences audiences, partly
because evil, the power to do ill, has a strong pull on his imagination.
His ideal is probably to be found in order, harmony, balance; but the other side
to him is that of the ironic humanist who relishes the unplanned-for kink in the
works that sabotages the perfect plan or machine - themes he treated in films as
different as The Killing, about a race track robbery going wrong, or Dr.
Strangelove, about the world's nuclear deterrent going apocalyptically
haywire. These two sides to his nature pull him in contrary directions giving
his films a tension in tune with an age trying to balance life and science,
humanity and the machine, and I think we'll find this most strongly emphasized
in A Clockwork Orange.
For months before filming began on A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick and
McDowell lived in each other's company, on each other's nerves, finding out
about their separate natures by playing such games as chess or table tennis -
such "play power" Kubrick finds useful as an index to personality that
will help him when he comes to seek an effect from his player before the camera.
But if this director takes infinite pains, he gives them too. A Clockwork
Orange demonstrated once again his ruthlessness in pursuit of absolute
authenticity.
On his instructions sterilized water was in the hypodermic syringe that injects
McDowell for the sequence where he undergoes aversion therapy. Eye-clamps on his
eyelids during the sequence required a specialist standing by to determine the
point at which it was risky to continue shooting lest the eyeballs dry up.
In scene after scene Kubrick's overriding interest was to discover "the
moment" - the one effect that makes everything else vital and unexpected,
that keys the scene to its own weird pitch.
One such occurred when a beating-up scene had reached an impasse. Suddenly
Kubrick, who wanted to give the scene a bizarrely horrific twist, asked McDowell
if he could dance, whereupon the actor did an impromptu buck-and-wing version of
the Hollywood classic Singin' in the Rain. At once Kubrick placed a call through
to Los Angeles asking Warner Bros to acquire the rights to the song and,
returning to the set, told McDowell: "That's it! You'll kick the victim
while you're dancing and singing." Such surrealistic moments pun through A
Clockwork Orange, managing to co-exist with an extraordinarily real world.
On one snowy day last winter a car took me deep into the Hertfordshire
countryside to a health farm - the film was made without any use of studio
facilities except for a special effects shot.
Kubrick and his crew had taken over one of the large rooms in this former
country mansion. Under the corniced ceiling and high windows, it still held a
jungle of gymnastic equipment - mechanical horses, rings, parallel bars - but
the highly erotic paintings, out of the School of Klimt, I would say, which
Kubrick had added to the walls now made the equipment look like torture
apparatus out of The Story of "O." This was the set for the sequence
where the Cat Woman, a vengeful eccentric, is killed in a fight with Alex.
To my surprise I found all the technical crew crouched outside the room, while
inside it were only Kubrick, McDowell,
Page 2
Miriam Karlin who plays the cat woman, and a man with a camera power-pack
buckled round his waist - Oh, and dozens of cats. Kubrick had decided to shoot
the fight to the death in 360 degrees with a hand-held camera, which meant that
everyone but the two people in the camera lens had to be cleared outside -
everyone, that is, but Kubrick who held the Arriflex camera, the man with the
power pack who held on to Kubrick and myself who held on to the man with power
pack by the trouser belt.
Around and around we whirled in vicious circles as McDowell and Karlin, armed
with a gigantic sculptured phallus and a bust of Beethoven respectively, lunged,
dodged and struck at each other till one of them was felled.
Kubrick was possessed of the energy of three times everyone else, and since I
was on the tail of the operation I received the full measure of centrifugal
force and in addition had to sidestep the panicky cats, a whole power station of
oddly-contorted electric lamps specially imported from Germany, as well as the
bobby-traps of gym apparatus.
It was nearly 7.30 p.m. before he called a halt. And all of this was on New
Year's Eve. It crossed my mind as I made my exhausted way home with him that the
day had been specially selected to show a layman like myself that even watching
Stanley Kubrick direct a film is not a passive occupation.
Alexander Walker
(Reprinted by kind permission of the Evening Standard)
Perhaps no film in the history of cinema has caused so much comment, prompted so
much publicity and generated so much interest as Stanley Kubrick's A
Clockwork Orange. Seeing the film is an experience. It lingers in the mind.
Such is the power of this fascinating film-maker.
Kubrick was born in New York in July, 1928. He was raised in the Bronx and first
became interested in photography when his father, a doctor, gave him a camera at
the age of 13. It took Kubrick a year to master the basics of photography and he
was only 17 when the picture editor of Look magazine gave him a job as an
apprentice photographer.
Kubrick's first feature film was Fear and Desire which he made with 10,000
dollars he borrowed from his family and 3,000 dollars of his own. Then came Killer's
Kiss and The Killing. It was, however, in 1957 that Kubrick really
established himself. He made Paths of Glory which is still considered one
of the best anti-war films ever made.
In 1961, after completing Spartacus, Kubrick came to London where he made
Lolita. He then went on to make Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A
Space Odyssey.
Page 4
There was me, that is Alex...
Page 5
...and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie
and Dim...
...and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks...
...what
to do with the evening.
The Korova Milkbar sold milk plus...
...milk plus vellocet or
synthemesc or drencrom...
...which is what we were drinking.
This would sharpen you
up and make you ready
for a bit of the old Ultra-Violence.
The Durango 95 purred away real horrorshow...
Soon it was trees and dark, my brothers...
...with real country dark.
What we were after now was the old surprise visit.
That was a real kick and good
for laughs...
...and lashings of the old ultra-violent.
It was around by the derelict casino that we came across Billy
Boy and his four droogs.
They were getting ready to perform a little of the old
in-out, in-out...
...on a weepy young devotchka they had there.
Go on do me in, you bastard cowards.
Page
7
Just singing in the rain
There was a bit of a nastiness last
night, yes.
Some very extreme nastiness, yes?
Viddy well, little brother, viddy well.
Page
9
You are now a murderer, little Alex. A murderer.
It's not true, sir. It was only a slight tolchock.
You try to frighten me, sir, admit so, sir.
This is some new form of torture...
...say it, brother, sir!
You are now 655321...
...and it
is your duty to memorize that number.
...Hymn 258 in the Prisoner's Hymnal.
Right, let's have a little reverence, you bastards.
I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns...
...and I
could viddy myself helping in and even taking charge...
...of the tolchoking and the
nailing in...
I like the parts where these old
yahoodies tolchock
each other...
That kept me going.
I was bound up in a straight jacket...
...and my gulliver was strapped to a
headrest with like
wires running away from it.
Then they clamped like lidlocks on my eyes so that I
could not shut
them...
...no matter how hard I tried.
Tomorrow, we send him out with confidence into the world again.
The Players
Alex | Malcolm McDowell |
Mr. Alexander | Patrick Magee |
Featuring in Alphabetical Order
Chief Guard | Michael Bates |
Dim | Warren Clarke |
Stage Actor | John Clive |
Mrs. Alexander | Adrienne Corri |
Dr. Brodsky | Carl Duering |
Tramp | Paul Farrell |
Lodger | Clive Francis |
Prison Governor | Michael Gover |
Catlady | Miriam Karlin |
Georgie | James Marcus |
Deltoid | Aubrey Morris |
Prison Chaplain | Godfrey Quigley |
Mum | Sheila Raynor |
Dr. Branom | Madge Ryan |
Conspirator | John Savident |
Minister | Anthony Sharp |
Dad | Philip Stone |
Psychiatrist | Pauline Taylor |
Conspirator | Margaret Tyzack |
The Credits
Produced and Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
Screenplay by | Stanley Kubrick |
Based on the Novel by | Anthony Burgess |
Consultant on Hair and Coloring | Leonard of London |
Associate Producer | Bernard Williams |
Assistant to the Producer | Jan Harlan |
Electronic Music Composed and Realized by | Walter Carlos |
Lighting Cameraman | John Alcott |
Production Designer | John Barry |
Editor | Bill Butler |
Sound Editor | Brian Blamey |
Sound Recordist | John Jordan |
Dubbing Mixers | Bill Rowe, Eddie Haben |
Art Directors | Russell Hagg, Peter Shields |
Wardrobe Supervisor | Ron Beck |
Costume Designer | Milena Canonero |
Stunt Arranger | Roy Scammel |
Special Paintings and Sculpture |
Herman Makkink,
Liz Moore Cornelius Makkink Christiane Kubrick |
She came towards me with the light like it was...
...the like light of heavenly grace...
...and the first
thing that flashed into me gulliver was that I'd like to have her right down
there on the floor...
But as quick as a shot came the sickness...
And, oh my brothers...
...would you believe your faithful friend and long suffering
narrator...
...pushed
out his red yahzick a mile-and-a-half...
...to lick the grahzny, vonny boots.
They laughed at my blood
and my moans.
Then there was like a sea of dirty, smelly old men...
...trying to get at your humble narrator...
...with
their feeble rookers...
...and horny old claws.
It was old age...
...having a go at youth...
And I daren't
do a single solitary thing, O my brothers...
...it being better to be hit at like
that than want to
sick...
...and feel that horrible pain.
Frank this young man needs some help.
...O my brothers and only friends...
...there was your
faithful narrator...
...being held helpless like a babe in arms...
...and suddenly realizing where he was
and why HOME on
the gate had looked so familiar.
The pain and sickness all over me like an animal.
Then I realized
what it was.
The music coming up from the floor...
...was our old friend Ludwig Van...
These scans and format © 2001-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net