9-11-12 A Clockwork Orange
Arvo Part born 1935 ; on 9-11-71 Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” LP was No. 1 in England.
I probably first became aware of “A Clockwork Orange” in the early 70’s. I knew that the original soundtrack prominently featured the Moog synthesizer (as played / arranged by Wendy Carlos). I realized that David Bowie used some “ACO” music as his ‘walk-on’ music, and that Bowie had pinched the word ‘droog’ from the book of “ACO”.
I could find and try and read the book, with it’s glossary of ‘malchick’ and ‘horrorshow’ type words – but being only 14, I could not go and see the “R”-rated movie by myself, just yet.
Certainly other things occupied my mind in 1972 – 1974: school, chasing girls, rock music etc. I finally got to see the Stanley Kubrick-directed film about 1975 or so, when the film was re-released in the U.S., and my 17-year-old self could somewhat easily get into “R”-rated films.
Malcolm McDowell is certainly an interesting actor – try and see his films “If…”, “O! Lucky Man!” (both directed by Lindsay Anderson) and “A Clockwork Orange” – together, they are a formidable body of work to absorb in a short amount of time (roughly 3 years). I was not offended by the “ultra violence”, it was merely part of the story set-up: errant youths really mess about, the authorities over-step their bounds by trying to condition the youths to be physically ill when they even think about violence, removing their ‘freedom of choice / will’. “If…” and “O! Lucky Man!” take a bit more of an explanation.
I saw “ACO” quite a few times, in the 70’s. It was a lot to take in – them walking through a British record store, with a huge “Vertigo” logo on the ceiling etc. All that ‘bleak’ British scenery, and bright interior colors.
I had a Beta of this film, in the 1980’s – with decent stereo audio. I got the Kubrick DVD boxed set some time ago – it’s definitely not the re-mastered version. I presume the re-mastered version has both improved “picture” and audio? Is it now a 5.1 audio DVD?
The CD has never been re-mastered, to my knowledge. I think my first CD of it was from Warner Germany, with a paint-face disc. My present ‘best copy’ is a Warner Japan CD. Additionally, I have several vinyl variants of the LP, and somewhere along the line, I even got a Warner 45 of the “Main Theme”.
