I first discovered Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange when — as memory serves — I was only about 10 years old. Since then I’ve watched the movie again at least 12 times, but it’s never been clear to me why I was so captivated by this film and why it remains one of my favorite psycho-social commentaries of the modern era. So I thought it would be fun to revisit some of the original reviews and criticisms.
Below are the excerpts from and links to three popular movie critics from the era. Enjoy!
Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times, 11 February 1972)
Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” is an ideological mess, a paranoid right-wing fantasy masquerading as an Orwellian warning. It pretends to oppose the police state and forced mind control, but all it really does is celebrate the nastiness of its hero, Alex.
Pauline Kael (The New Yorker Magazine, January, 1972)
Literal-minded in its sex and brutality, Teutonic in its humor, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange might be the work of a strict and exacting German professor who set out to make a porno-violent sci-fi Comedy. Is there anything sadder — and ultimately more repellent — than a clean-minded pornographer? The numerous rapes and beatings have no ferocity and no sensuality; they’re frigidly, pedantically calculated, and because there is no motivating emotion, the viewer may experience them as an indignity and wish to leave. The movie follows the Anthony Burgess novel so closely that the book might have served as the script, yet that thick-skulled German professor may be Dr. Strangelove himself, because the meanings are turned around.
Hollis Alpert (The Saturday Review, December 25, 1971)
It is doubtful that any novel has ever been adapted for the screen as brilliantly as this one. Critic Stanley Edgar Hyman termed the book “an eloquent and shocking novel that is quite unique.” Fully as unique, and as eloquent and shocking, is this film by Kubrick, an extraordinary accomplishment in itself. It will undoubtedly cause shock waves among other directors, for Kubrick, in technical areas, at least, has surpassed them all.