From Anthony Burgess’ novel (the English first version, lacking the more optimistic last chapter): Alex, head of a gang of hooligans called droogs (in Russian “friends”, according to the slang invented by Burgess), is betrayed by his mates and captured by the police. He then chooses a special cure (“Ludwig”, as he loves Beethoven) based on violent movies in order to get out of prison, as by now he is sick of any kind of violence; but he is subjected to it, and tries to commit suicide. In the end, he “recovers”. Masterpiece on an alarming topical subject. The movie, very bitter, prophetic and shocking, is an apologue on violence, both individual and social, a sort of paraphrasis of the misadventures of a cynical romantic hero of the XIX century. It shows that the pure insanity of a boy must not be hated more than the one imposed by society on individuals, just because it is more evident. The (dangerous) ambiguity of the character and of the story aims just at making the two kinds of violence coincide, at not telling them apart. If anything, the best one is the individual’s instinctive violence (as Kubrick lets it show by using tuneful and melodic music in the first part, and distorted music in the second part). In the end, individual violence is absorbed and exploited by society (Alex turns into a clockwork orange in the hands of other people), but Kubrick is against it, as it is shown in the last, vulgar and bleak framing, which underlines the fact that Alex has not recovered at all actually: in fact, he has never been good, and for this reason Enzo Natta of the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana rightly commented that the movie is a “theological dissertation on free will”. From a formal and stylistic point of view, it is one of Kubrick’s most refined movies for its visual and directing innovations (subjective shots, slow-motion takes, speeding up, wide-angles, distortions, tracking shots…) and for the ideas which immediately made it a cult (the way of speaking, the Victorian clothes, the beating up to the playing of Singing in the rain, partly invented by McDowell, the décor, Alex’s unnatural moves when he is spoon-fed), and it is completely set into the culture of the Sixties and Seventies, based on drugs, pop art, sexual freedom, improvisation and ecstasy, anarchy, connivance between crime and government etc. All in all, it is even amusing and exciting, and it is also ironical about those theories according to which violence in movies generates violence (here, the Ludwig cure does not generate evil, but not even good), and offers an extraordinary metaphor of vision (a part from care, the movie begins with the framing of an eye). It shocked the audience of the Seventies, and it is still shocking, so much that in its own country it was forbidden, and Kubrick himself took it back (because of the defamatory charges of fascism). In Italy, it has never been shown on TV (in Great Britain it has been broadcasted for the first time on October 13th 2002, as a late night show, on Channel 4, and was preceded by a documentary on the event by Paul Joyce, broadcasted the night before). For Malcolm McDowell (dubbed by Adalberto Maria Merli), whose performance is excellent, it represented the most important role of his life. Italian remake of 1998, not in the original language. (www.centraldocinema.it)