Malcolm McDowell does a good job as the main character, especially the particular look of his smile makes him look quite deviant, kind of like the Joker. Everyone else is more or less forgettable, although the Hitler-looking prison warden did a decent job. The score was quite good. The film somewhat held my attention but not fully; the best parts were the early criminal scenes and the scenes with McDowell being brainwashed.

I would give it...I don't know, I guess a 5.5/10.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48183101)

he overcomes the predictive programming (is that the socialism, the destruction of free will?) by the political opposition torturing him into trying to kill himself (is that good or bad? it seemed like they wanted him to try to kill himself even before the wheelchair guy realized mcdowell killed his wife) and at the end he goes back to a life of crime and goes on the government dole for helping a corrupt government stay in power (is that the socialism?)

the message is really muddled

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48183105)

ebert thought it had no message as well: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-clockwork-orange-1972

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48183109)

"all it really does is celebrate the nastiness of its hero, Alex"

per the catholic note below, the book makes it much more clear that the possibility of redemption is motivating the overall message. but in the film they nailed the deviant look so exactly and didn't give the viewer any inkling that the character is someone who can possibly be expected to achieve redemption. as a result, it's a flawed film despite technical mastery

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48183518)

I like Pauline Kael, too, but she's sometimes just a bit too arch or misses the point.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48183554)

Author was very Catholic, and the fact that he was an atheist for most of his life (maybe all? I forget) doesn’t really get in the way of his enunciation of the Catholic ethos of the need for free will and the dignity of the human person, even when it throws up hard problems like the evil of Alex.

The movie gets some of this across but there the point seems more to be that the Ludovico Technique and associated apparatus is evil because it’s the same sort of reveling in cruelty that Alex does, except under the aegis of the state and morality. The movie just gives you the sort of grim choice between cruelty dispersed to the level of the individual and then meted out upon society at large (droog violence) or concentrated at the level of the collective and meted out upon individuals (Ludovico etc).

The book doesn’t escape this problem but leans into the idea that ultimately the latter is more evil because it takes away the ability of the individual to make a moral change (I know they do say this pretty explicitly in the movie but the book is more didactic on this point). This is why it’s impermissible to rewire Alex—it denies the possibility of his own salvation. Much of Catholic opposition to the death penalty comes from the same place.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48183275)

the book the fictional author is writing at the time is called clockwork orange fwiw

also fwiw btw Burgess was known to be a pathological liar so who knows how many of these details are actually true

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48183484)

a genuinely unique and creative attempt to show youth slang and how its simultaneously (1) internally coherent and comprehensible and (2) total nonsense to adults

using russian style words was brilliant and prevents (imo) it from sounding dated. imagine if the characters in the book were saying things like "say, mac daddy, that's a foxy chick" - which would more accurately reflect the actual slang of the time

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310919#48183507)