Steven Spielberg Calls Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange “the First Punk Rock Film Ever Made”

Steven Spiel­berg and Stan­ley Kubrick are two of the primary direc­tors whose names younger cinephiles get to know. They’re additionally names between which fairly a couple of of these younger cinephiles draw a bat­tle line: you will have loved movies by each of those auteurs, however ulti­mate­ly, you’re going to must facet with one cin­e­mat­ic ethos or the oth­er. But Spiel­berg clear­ly admires Kubrick him­self: his 2001 movie A.I. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence orig­i­nat­ed as an unfin­ished Kubrick venture, and he’s gone on report many instances prais­ing Kubrick­’s work.

That is true even of such an un-Spiel­ber­gian pic­ture as A Clock­work Orange, a col­lec­tion of Spiel­berg’s com­ments on which you’ll hear col­lect­ed in the video above. He calls it “the primary punk-rock film ever made. It was a really bleak imaginative and prescient of a dan­ger­ous future the place younger peo­ple, youngsters, are free to roam the streets with­out any form of parental excep­tion. They break into properties, they usually assault and rape peo­ple. The sub­ject mat­ter was dan­ger­ous.” On one lev­el, you possibly can see how this may attraction to Spiel­berg, who in his personal oeu­vre has returned over and over to the sub­ject of youth.

But Kubrick makes strikes that appear prac­ti­cal­ly incon­ceiv­capable of Spiel­berg, “espe­cial­ly the scene the place you hear Gene Kel­ly singing ‘Sin­gin’ within the Rain’ ” when Mal­colm McDow­ell’s Alex DeLarge is “kick­ing a person prac­ti­cal­ly to dying. That was some of the hor­ri­fy­ing issues I feel I’ve ever wit­nessed.” And certainly, such a sav­age coun­ter­level between music and motion is nowhere to be discovered within the fil­mog­ra­phy of Steven Spiel­berg, which has acquired crit­i­cism from the Kubrick-enjoy­ers of the world for the emo­tion­al one-dimen­sion­al­i­ty of its scores (even these com­posed by his acclaimed lengthy­time col­lab­o­ra­tor John Williams).

Much less honest­ly, Spiel­berg has additionally been charged with an inabil­i­ty to withstand hap­py finish­ings, or not less than a dis­com­fort with ambigu­ous ones. He would nev­er, in any case, finish a pic­ture the best way he sees Kubrick as hav­ing finish­ed A Clock­work Orange: regardless of the inten­sive “depro­gram­ming” Alex beneath­goes, “he comes out the oth­er finish extra appeal­ing, extra wit­ty, and with such a dev­il­ish wink and blink on the audi­ence, that I’m com­plete­ly cer­tain that when he will get out of that hos­pi­tal, he’s going to kill his moth­er and his father and his half­ners and his mates, and he’s going to be worse than he was when he went in.” To Spiel­berg’s thoughts, Kubrick made a “defeatist” movie; but he, like each Kubrick fan, should additionally rec­og­nize it as an artis­tic vic­to­ry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Steven Spiel­berg on the Genius of Stan­ley Kubrick

When Stan­ley Kubrick Banned His Personal Movie, A Clock­work Orange: It Was the “Most Effec­tive Cen­sor­ship of a Movie in British His­to­ry”

Peter Promote­ers Calls Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange “Vio­lent,” “The Greatest Load of Crap I’ve Seen” (1972)

A Clock­work Orange Writer Antho­ny Burgess Lists His 5 Favourite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & Extra

Ter­ry Gilliam on the Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick & Spiel­berg: Kubrick Makes You Suppose, Spiel­berg Wraps Each­factor Up with Neat Lit­tle Bows

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video sequence The Metropolis in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.