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RedTarzan
Reviews
An Examination of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1972)
Dated and a bit dry but useful, intelligent, and sometimes fascinating.
You can find a recording of this interesting television programme without rooting around for it because it is on the well-known website, Youtube, where it was copied in three ten-minute parts in August 2010. The rules here forbid the posting of links, but it is easily found.
This is not a British but an American discussion programme series called "Camera Three", aired on the CBS network. This edition was entitled, "An Examination of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange".
You should find it passably enjoyable unless you have wrecked your senses with cheap modern living. McDowell is forthright in his disagreement with the host, Everson, and Burgess is intelligent.
One fascinating sequence shows pictures of the innovative electronic composer Walter (later Wendy) Carlos working in his studio with producer Rachel Elkind on the film soundtrack. The early electronic synthesizer equipment is sprawling and bristling with cables and looks very much the museum pieces they have now become.
Overall, the programme is very dated and dusty in its approach with the host speaking at great length to the camera and his guests so that their contributions are much briefer than they would be today, yet it does offer a modestly useful introduction to the book and film, as far as it goes.
Those who remember having ashtrays on their desks at work will smile in recognition at the guests smoking away unselfconsciously in the television studio, such normal practice in the early liberal decades of television broadcasting that audiences didn't even notice.
Ulysses (1967)
Terrific and brave adaptation of a difficult book.
Having enjoyed Joyce's complex novel so keenly I was prepared to be disappointed by Joseph Strick's and Fred Haines's screenplay, given the fabulous complexity of the original text. However, the film turned out to be very well done and a fine translation of the tone, naturalism, and levity of the book.
It certainly helps to have read the original text before viewing the film. I imagine the latter would seem disjointed, with very odd episodes apparently randomly stitched together, without a prior reading of the text to help grasp the plot.
It's amazing to see how "filthy" the film is, given that it was shot in Dublin in 1967. The Irish film censors only, finally, unbanned it for viewing by general audiences in Ireland as late as 2000 (it was shown to restricted audiences in a private cinema club, the Irish Film Theatre, in the late 1970s). Joyce's eroticism is not simply naturalistic and raunchy, it offers many wildly "perverse" episodes. Never mind that so many of these fetishes were unacceptable when the book was published in 1922 - they were still utterly taboo when the film was made in 1967.
It is astonishing and heartening to watch the cream of the Irish acting profession of the 1960s, respected players all, daring to utter and enact Joyce's hugely transgressive text with such gusto.
Bravo!