Other Titles • A Clockwork Orange • Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange (1971) • Uhrwerk Orange (1972)
Trivia from A Clockwork Orange (1971)
1
The film contains no mention of, nor reference to, the phrase "A Clockwork Orange". The fact that deranged author F. Alexander is supposed to have written a political tract of that name (with an explicit passage explaining the title, which is 'quoted' in the novel) is not mentioned. Nor is the deranged author's last name mentioned, omitting the ironic parallel between the two "Alexanders" inferred in the novel, although his first name, "Frank" is used.
(26 votes)
2
Thinly-disguised references to Kubrick appear in another Burgess novel - Earthly Powers features a crafty director called 'Zabrick' - and a parallel with Burgess's own experience of being held accountable for the film appears in The Clockwork Testament with the fictional poet FX Enderby being attacked for supposedly glorifying violence in a film adaptation.
(14 votes)
3
Theatrical Release: February 9, 1972
(13 votes)
4
After Kubrick's film was released, Burgess wrote a Clockwork Orange stage play. (He modeled one of Alex's early victims on Kubrick - a bearded trumpeter who plays Singin' in the Rain at the Korova milkbar.) In the stage version, Dr. Branom "defects" from the psychiatric clinic when she realizes that the treatment has destroyed Alex's ability to enjoy music. This version also restores the novel's 21st chapter, ending with Alex deciding to start a family.
(14 votes)
5
A second version, entitled A Clockwork Orange 2004 was written for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1990. This is entirely free of references to the film, and does away with the 21st chapter.
(9 votes)
6
Seven years prior to the Kubrick film, Andy Warhol had produced a low-budget version, titled Clockwork (also known as Vinyl). Reportedly, the only two recognizable scenes are those where Victor (Alex) wreaks general havoc and undergoes the Ludovico treatment.
7
The first dramatization of A Clockwork Orange (excerpts from first three chapters only) was by the BBC, for part of the Tonight programme, broadcast shortly after the novel's original publication. No recording of this dramatization has survived.
8
During the filming of the Ludovico scene, star Malcolm McDowell scratched one of his corneas and was temporarily blinded. The doctor standing next to him, frequently dropping saline solution into his forced-open eyes, was not just for filming purposes, but was actually necessary to prevent McDowell's eyes from drying. He suffered cracked ribs during filming of the humiliation stage show, and he also nearly drowned when his breathing apparatus failed while being held underwater in the trough scene.
9
When Alex jumps out the window to try to end his torment, the viewer sees the ground coming toward the camera until they collide. This effect was achieved by dropping a portable camera from two or three stories up, lens pointing downward, thus presenting a realistic sense of what such a fall could be like... although the way Alex (either McDowell or a stuntman) jumped, he actually would have landed on his back (presumably into a net).
10
Walter Carlos's synthesized score features the first ever use of a vocoder.
11
Members of The Rolling Stones proposed to film their own adaptation before Kubrick decided to do so. Other unrealized versions were supposedly to contain girls in miniskirts or senior citizens instead of the teenage rowdies.
12
There is also a pornographic spin-off, entitled A Clockwork Orgy. In this version, Alex is a female (Alexandra), the Korova is just a regular, run-of-the-mill bar, and there is no prison chaplain.
13
There was also the inevitable Mad magazine parody, A Crockwork Lemon.
14
The film of A Clockwork Orange contains several in-jokes: for example, the album cover of the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey is clearly visible in a record-shop scene.
15
Alex's surname is given verbally as 'DeLarge' on his arrival at prison in the film. This appears to have been taken from a pun in the book, when Alex (referring to his penis) refers to himself as 'Alexander the Large' (as opposed to 'Alexander the Great'). Alex's surname is not given in the book. However, in newspaper clippings seen towards the end of the film, Alex's surname appears as 'Burgess'. Whether this is a continuity error or another in-joke is unknown.
16
In the film version, the car seen before the scene of ultraviolence at "HOME" is the M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16. Only three were produced.
17
The female furniture sculptures in the Korova Milkbar were based on works by Allen Jones.
18
In the cartoon Megas XLR, one of the episodes title is called "A Clockwork Megas".
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