The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

A Clockwork Orange
65
How would you describe A Clockwork Orange to someone who has never
seen it?
Dahl: It stars Malcolm McDowell as Alex, and it’s set in the near future.
He’s a violent gang member who is arrested for murder, sentenced to jail,
and gets the opportunity to be rehabilitated through the Ludovico technique
to be cured of his violent tendencies, though it doesn’t work out so
well. You can describe it as an amoral world.
You saw this first at a drive-in movie. Would you tell me that story?
Dahl: I was seventeen. I saw it at the Motor View drive-in in Billings, Montana.
I took a date to this movie—I had no idea what it was; it just looked
kind of cool. I liked it so much that I went back the next night and watched
it by myself. What I liked about it is that it combined music and art. It was
the first time I paid attention to the sets and the way the film was made.
Was there a particular scene that compelled you?
Dahl: There was a style to the movie. I was really interested in art and rock
’n’ roll at that point, so I really liked the way the art worked, the modern
clean spaces, and the use of Beethoven. I thought that was unique at that
time. The other thing he had done with the music, was some of it was very
classical and some of it had been done with a synthesizer. When I saw this
movie it was a completely different—I don’t even know what else came out
that year, but there was nothing else like it. It was a very avant-garde movie
at the time. And then there’s the Crime and Punishment elements. Can you
rehabilitate somebody? And if you do, do you take away their free will?
The film is in this mix of English and—I think it’s called Nadsat—which
is Anthony Burgess’s language of made-up Russian root words. Did you
have trouble making sense of that? What was your reaction to it?
Dahl: Not at all. It engaged me because they were speaking English, but
they were using foreign words—and it was fun that you still understood
what they were talking about. In a strange way, I don’t know really what that
has to do with the movie other than just making it feel like it’s from another
time. Now it looks very dated to the ’70s, but I think he was trying to push
the edge, extend it into the future a little bit. So it was a futuristic glimpse.