Film· 1971· Science Fiction

A Clockwork Orange

by Stanley Kubrick

A Clockwork Orange: it draws on 1 recorded source.

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What influenced A Clockwork Orange

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A Clockwork Orange

Book · 1962

AdaptationHIGH

Kubrick's film of Burgess's novel, and the truncation is the whole story of the relationship. Burgess wrote twenty-one chapters, the last of which has Alex grow tired of violence and want a son. His American publisher cut it, and the US edition Kubrick worked from ends at chapter twenty, with Alex restored to himself and glad of it. So the film's notorious ending is faithful to the book Kubrick read and unfaithful to the book Burgess wrote. Burgess spent years saying so, and came to resent that the film was the version the world knew. Everything else transfers intact: Nadsat, the Ludovico technique, the first-person address to the reader that becomes Alex's voiceover.

About the work

A Clockwork Orange

It is based on Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel. The film employs disturbing and violent themes to comment on psychiatry, juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and broader social, political, and economic issues in a dystopian near-future Britain.