A Clockwork Orange - What's the Difference?

[Music] [Music] hello my little droogies pour yourself a mulatto + and gather round uncle o brothers ready you gulliver's - slooshy a bit of the old ultraviolence a real horrorshow film drum of what's the difference you are invited so you have like a Clockwork Orange - English Dictionary open right now it's called nadsat and yes yes I do okay cool let me see that so vide well all my brothers and sisters and come and get a great big jar block offal from the Biblio by Anthony Burgess and the singing of Stanley Kubrick I'm your newest Droog Dustin McLean and I'm your Dobby old vet Clint gage and now with my rappy Polly loggy for the spoilers it's time to ask what's the difference do we have to speak in nads at the whole time no no no that would be as difficult to write as it is to read but we can't point out that the language created by author Anthony Burgess which is a mangled combination of Russian and childlike English slang is very faithfully adapted to the screen for example this line is word-for-word from the book in fact plenty of the movie comes beat for beat from the book most of the plot proceeds in a similar way in both the book and movie they both open in the core of a milk bar where Alex and his droogs are getting knifed up for the evening however the book features a bit more of the old ultraviolence while the movie has Alex and his gang beating up a drunken singing beggar before stealing a car heading out to the country and attacking the writer and his wife at home look Alex at all assault a scholar carrying books home from the library beat the crap out of a shop owner and his wife before robbing them and even make a stop at another bar the Duke of New York to buy drinks for some old babushkas who in turn give the gang an alibi for the night the noiceboys was with her so evening you see noises boys yeah but it's a but the movie also changes the look of Alex and his drew the book describes the drugs as wearing black tights and waistcoats with huge shoulder pads and off-white cravats and not the now iconic white outfits with suspenders black hats and codpieces the thick black boots are the only part of their look that survives the adaptation yeah but that's all Manutius stuff one of the more interesting changes from book to movie is what the author is working on at home in the book alex grabs the page of the manuscript which is titled a Clockwork Orange the excerpt outlines the basic theme of the book that imposing rules and conditions more appropriate for a machine onto a man is against the very idea of a natural being with the ability to change and grow the movie on the other hand makes no mention of the title or contents of the manuscript and only reveals him to be a writer of subversive literature much later in the film leaving a weird little bit of meta-narrative out in favour of focusing on the brutal quartet of groups after this first night of ultra violence the film and novel line up again for a time alex feigns a pain in the Gulliver the following day to skip school he then gets a midday visit from his corrections officer before heading out to a record shop where he meets a few young for tips as shopping for the latest pop hotness and then we run into another significant change what you got back home little sister to play off fuzzy wobbles on I bet you've got little save pitiful portable picnic players in the film Alex flirts with girls who seem more or less the same age as Alex then has an apparently consensual afternoon of three-way sex the scene in this context just makes Alex seem like more of a wayward school skipping teenage no-goodnik perhaps even making him a bit more relatable to the viewer in a kids today with their playing hooky sort of way look Alex on the other hand meets two ten-year-old girls at the record shop and when they get back to his place he gets them drunk and rapes them so yeah total relentless monster in the book gross super gross but the details of Alex's imprisonment stay mostly the same from book to movie as well Alex being challenged for leadership of the gang is betrayed by his drugs after murdering a crazy cat lady then sent packing for 14 years worth of hard time but this is where the real difference in book and movie starts to become more evident after Alex as a character is thoroughly set up in the then begins to work on him the movie becomes more obsessed with the system itself just look at the scene where Alex is processed into the prison it's five minutes worth of procedure and paperwork orchestrated by a barking authoritarian buffoon of a prison go this type of hyper focus on procedural detail is nowhere to be found in the book book alex's prison experience includes developing a relationship with the prison chaplain as well as imagining that he's a Roman soldier whipping Jesus but the focus of his jail time quickly shifts towards the problem of overcrowding and when a troublemaking fifth inmate must bunk with them Alex and his cell mates end up beating the man to death Alex taking the blame for it owing to a decisive final kick to the Gulliver but when it comes time to be chosen for the Ludovico technique movie alex is chosen simply because he speaks up at the right time thank you very much for this chance sir let's hope you make the most of it Luke Alex on the other hand is chosen specifically because he killed another man on the inside he's a perfect example of a killer who will always be a killer no matter the punishment from here the rest of the story plays out more or less the same in the book in the movie the Ludovico technique consists of injections of an experimental serum combined with exposure to ultraviolet imagery and his final exam is a man bullying Alex into licking his boot and a naked woman whom Alex can't bring himself to take advantage of and once cured alex is back out in the world only to find his parents have rented out his old room to a lodger and his old Droog dim and old nemesis billy-boy have become police officers Alex homeless and helpless finds himself trudging back to the scene of an earlier crime home [Music] one slight difference is that instead of Alex crooning singing in the rain the writer realizes who Alex really is by catching him in more conversational details but either way the politically motivated writer and his cronies decide to stage a suicide by a Ludwig van for your humble narrator as a means to oust the current government who left Alex in such a fragile helpless state and once alex is healed up and given a battery of Rorschach tests he's back to normal I was cured all right and that's where the movie ends however it's not where the book ends at least not the version read in every country on the planet except the United States the original manuscript of a Clockwork Orange featured three sections of seven chapters each and was published that way everywhere the 20th chapter ends with I was healed all right but the 21st chapter flashes forward to Alex's new life still in the Kaurava milk bar but now a wizened 18 years of age he's got a new set of drugs who set about doing the same old thing terrorizing innocent people on the nighttime streets of London but in the 21st chapter Alex decides it might be time to grow up he leaves his drugs one night to do what they will opting instead for a quiet drink on his own where he contemplates his job possibly making some music and even having a child of his own he even runs into Georgia one of his old droogs who's having dinner with a new life alex is confronted with the idea of evolving into something else but the 21st chapter wasn't seen in the US until 1986 a full 24 years after the book's original publishing and so because the American publishers decided the 21st chapter just wouldn't play stateside the real difference between the book and movie is thematic focus Kubrick's version tells the story of a completely inept and ineffective system an establishment represented by goofy prison guards caseworkers who accidentally drink denture water and doctors who boink on the job the book on the other hand focuses all on choice and man's free will the idea that a Clockwork Orange unnaturally evolving being forced to operate by machine like sets of rules should not and moreover cannot exist so my brothers that's that for your humble narrators until next time take care to keep your glasses trained to Cinna fix to vide the most Zemin chats in ease your residence can handle you mean subscribe to Cinna fix for more what's the difference in all of our great movie content yep that's exactly what I said

Channel: CineFix - IGN Movies and TV

Views: 1,432,273

Keywords: cinefix, what's the difference, a clockwork orange, stanley kubrick, anthony burgess, film adaptation, book to film, michael mcdowell

Id: 6Yrk4wNSwos

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 17 2017