Kubrick was a perfectionist, and his dedication to achieving
just the right image, keeping to a low budget, and portraying violence
artistically made A Clockwork Orange a classic.
Kubrick was known to reshoot scenes scores of times, which was often
difficult for those who worked with him. However, many of the actors
he directed have praised his ability to bring out of them a unique
expressiveness. Kubrick began his career as a photographer, and
he made himself famous both for his distinctive aesthetic vision
and for his technical skill in realizing that vision. His ability
did not come only from technical mastery but also from technical
creativity. For example, when Kubrick wanted to capture the physical
feeling of Alex’s fall from the window during his suicide attempt,
he wrapped a camera in Styrofoam boxes and threw it out the window.
He threw it out the window six times, until he achieved the effect
he wanted.
Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange on a
budget of just $2 million, which is very
small for a major feature film. He shot much of the film on location
to avoid building sets, and he avoided using expensive lighting
by shooting many of the scenes with natural light. Similarly, Kubrick
determined that handheld cameras should be used for much of the
film. This choice was not just a budgetary decision but also an
aesthetic one. Kubrick shot the famous “Singin’ in the Rain” rape
scene, for instance, with a handheld camera. The handheld camera
provides an intimacy that intensifies the savagery of the scene.
Also, the visual disorientation we experience as the camera switches
perspective increases our own sense of disorientation. Sometimes
we see the action from the victim’s vantage point, while at other
points we see it through Alex’s eyes.
Violence is at the center of A Clockwork Orange, and
it is easy to see Kubrick’s signature on these scenes. He distorted
and stylized the violent actions, creating an artistic detachment
from the violence that seems to match Alex’s own detachment. For
example, early in the film, Alex’s gang fights a rival gang. They
meet in an abandoned theater, once a model of classical splendor,
now utterly run down. Appropriate to the setting, Kubrick set the
fight to soaring classical music. The characters engage in bloody
battle, but as the camera pans in and out, offering close-ups and
panoramic views of the action, Kubrick has his actors move in ways
that make the action look more like acrobatics or ballet than a
gang fight.
In scene after scene, Kubrick directs images of violence
in a similarly artistic way. Alex prepares to rape Mrs. Alexander
while singing “Singin’ in the Rain”and doing a
soft-shoe. When Alex beats up his two Droogs, Dim and Georgie, Kubrick
once again sets the fight to classical music, and this time he slows
down the motion. The actors’ physical gestures become so exaggerated
in this slow-motion scene that the fight again looks like a dance.
The exceptions to these artistically rendered scenes are the scenes
in which policemen beat Alex. There, Kubrick uses no music, and
the blood flows, suggesting that the police are simply brutal thugs,
not artists working in the medium of violence. Kubrick uses his
directorial vision to offer us an experience of violence as Alex
would have experienced it.
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