TSPDT placing: #93
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Written by: Anthony Burgess (novel), Stanley Kubrick (screenplay)
Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke, Adrienne Corri, Anthony Sharp, David Prowse
WARNING: Plot and/or ending details may follow!!!
In Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess' bizarre 1959 dystopian novel, a juvenile delinquent (Malcolm McDowell) and his gang of droogs whittle away their time partaking in such wholesome activities as beating homeless drunks, warring with rival gangs, raping helpless women, and enjoying the music of Ludwig Van Beethoven. There are two things happening in this film: one that Kubrick inherited from Burgess' writing, and another that is endemic to the cinematic medium.
The first role of A Clockwork Orange (1971) is as a rather vicious political satire, dryly mocking the hypocrisy of the government and its policies on institutionalisation and criminal rehabilitation. In the film, the Minister of the Interior (Anthony Sharp) is depicted as opportunistic and self-serving, latching onto the unproven Ludovico technique in a bid to stem his party's failing popularity with voters. When public opinion turns against the therapy, the Minister very swiftly back-peddles, reversing the treatment so that Alex may return to his former ultra-violent ways: "I was cured alright!"
The UK edition of Burgess' novel contained a final chapter in which Alex sees the error of his former ways, and vows to reform into a productive member of society. Kubrick was unaware of this addition until he had almost completed the screenplay, and never considered using it in the film. This was, I think, a good decision. Burgess' ending shies away from the problem: by letting human nature run its course, he seems to be implying that the problem of juvenile delinquency will sort itself out. Kubrick, admittedly, doesn't offer any solutions of his own, but the corrupt manner in which he ends the film leaves a sour taste.
The Ludovico technique depicted in the film involves the screening of movies, which allows Kubrick room for a degree of self-referentiality. It is in the audiences' nature to recoil from acts of sex and violence, and Kubrick's hard-nosed, deliberately-subversive approach (utilising the perspective of its biased protagonist and narrator) only encourages this response. Just as Alex is exposed to the Ludovico aversion therapy, Kubrick is exposing his audience to the same treatment. Does it work? Do we become desensitised to the violence, or do we begin to associate socially-accepted cues (i.e. Beethoven's Ninth, "Singing in the Rain") with acts of evil?
9/10
Currently my #1 film of 1971:
1) A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
2) Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah)
3) Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart)
4) The French Connection (William Friedkin)
5) Get Carter (Mike Hodges)
6) Bananas (Woody Allen)
7) The Stalls of Barchester (Lawrence Gordon Clark) (TV)
2) Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah)
3) Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart)
4) The French Connection (William Friedkin)
5) Get Carter (Mike Hodges)
6) Bananas (Woody Allen)
7) The Stalls of Barchester (Lawrence Gordon Clark) (TV)
Science-fiction has often tackled the notion that Mankind's technology is destined to rebel, as in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). However, unlike most entries to the genre, T2: Judgement Day takes the time to explore the idea. As in Kubrick's film, the fates of humans and machines become inescapably entwined: Man is no longer merely the designer (a la Dr. Frankenstein) who creates an artificial son, but one who must learn from his progeny. Accordingly, John Connor (Edward Furlong) and the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) share a father-son relationship that twists back on itself like a Moebius strip, each half teaching the other. In one haunting sequence, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) grimly contemplates the Terminator's unwavering loyalty towards John, and his ironic suitability as a father figure. This grotesque interlacing of familial roles speaks a clear message: if Judgement Day is to be averted, Man and Machine must coexist as equals, though human vanity may never allow it.
Throughout the film, Cameron weaves one astonishing action set-piece after another, utilising a seamless combination CGI and optical trickery. The T-1000 Terminator at first glance seems reasonably innocuous, but Robert Patrick brings something icily sinister to the role, a cold intelligence that isn't strictly mechanical but somehow filled with imagination. An equally fascinating character, I thought, was Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor, a complete reversal from the innocent Sarah Connor of the previous film. Now emotionally hardened by the prospect of nuclear holocaust, Sarah sees only ghosts where she once saw people, her apathy stemmed only by her maternal instincts towards John. In a haunting dream sequence, Sarah Connor is powerless to warn a younger version of herself (representative of society at large) of the coming dangers, her screams consumed by a nuclear blast that levels cities and engulfs her in flames. Hamilton's performance is bold and ferocious, perhaps cinema's most intense female action role (not coincidentally, James Cameron also provided us with the runner-up, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Aliens).
Considering the director's association with low-budget schlock, I had expected a film with unquestionably shoddy production values. Instead, 'The Tingler (1959)' is impeccably shot by Wilfred M. Cline and generally well-written (Dr. Chapin referencing both his wife and a stray cat: "Have you two met? In the same alley, perhaps?"). Horror icon Vincent Price is the film's charismatic star, but excellent supporting performances are given by Judith Evelyn as a deaf and dumb cinema owner, Philip Coolidge as her anxious husband, and Patricia Cutts – sexy and acerbic – as Dr. Chapin's unfaithful wife. The story does occasionally descend into silliness, but Price nonetheless manages to deliver even the campiest of lines with unmatched class. The Tingler itself looks glaringly artificial, a rubber contraption that is pulled along the floor with wires, but its initial entrance is still something to behold. I leaned forward, my mouth agape in revulsion and disbelief, as the slimy, pulsating creature – seen only in silhouette – was extracted from its host's body, and deposited, wriggling gruesomely, into a pet cage.
Unlike countless awful 1950s sci-fi/horror films, The Tingler isn't merely in the business of (ostensibly) scaring its audience; it aims to entertain them – to elicit screams, laughs and everything in between. Castle takes you aside with a mischievous wink, lets you in on the joke, and invites you to enjoy the film's effect on the lesser masses. Whether or not his film actually caused any cinema hysterics or fatal heart attacks is difficult to deduce {one of Castle's other tricks was to plant shills in the audience, who would scream on cue}, but there's no doubt that his picture genuinely involved the audience. Every single unsubtle technique utilised by the film – most memorably, the black-and-white suddenly punctuated by blood red, a little trick he learnt from Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) – is a nod to the participation of its viewers. This makes the film abstract, surreal, almost interactive; when Vincent Price implores the cinema audience to scream, we know he's talking to us, and when the Tingler's stark silhouette creeps slimily across our movie screen… well, don't forget to scream.
What others have said:
It doesn't take long, however, for the film to fall into the familiar trappings of a pulp detective novel, not unlike your typical Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett adaptation. This isn't necessarily a damaging characteristic, and the film very much retains its ability to thrill and entertain, but it loses the raw grittiness that, stylistically, made the prologue sequence so damn gripping. The remainder of the story, creatively adapted from a novel by Mickey Spillane, interestingly blends two distinct genres: on the one hand, it's a hard-boiled pulp detective story, complete with a hard-edged private investigator, seedy villains and a scheming femme fatale. On the other hand, it's a science-fiction off-shoot of the Cold War, with a destructive, possibly-nuclear Macguffin for which the film's characters are quite willing to kill. Ralph Meeker is ideally-cast as Mike Hammer, a wry, stubborn and selfish detective whose inability to cooperate with the unsympathetic authorities can only lead to apocalypse. The screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides, like many noirs, carries a streak of misogyny, with even the innocent girls (including Maxine Cooper and Cloris Leachman) being neglected and abused at every turn.
Kiss Me Deadly is also interesting in that the filmmakers have obviously become very aware of typical film noir conventions, and the inclusion of the mysterious Pandora's Box - knowingly referred to as "the great whatsit" - is a deliberate satire of what Alfred Hitchcock had called the MacGuffin, a plot device that motivates the film's characters, but the details of which are of little or no importance. The influence of this device can be seen in numerous subsequent pictures, from the opening of the Ark of the Covenant in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) to the mysterious glowing briefcase in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). The DVD release of Kiss Me Deadly includes the film's restored original ending, in which Hammer and Velda escape into the crashing waves, their futures nonetheless still uncertain, as the apocalyptic nuclear device destroys the seaside cottage in a blinding mushroom cloud. I much preferred it to the abrupt, truncated ending that had previously been present in most prints, and Aldrich himself confirmed that he had no part in the somewhat-crude chopping of his film's conclusion.
National Film Preservation Board, USA:
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