The film made Malcolm McDowell a star — up until that point he had done some nice “arthouse” films, director Lindsay Anderson’s If …, Joseph Losey’s Figures in a Landscape and Bryan Forbes’ Long Ago, Tomorrow — but his performance as Alex, the leader of his “droogs” band of robbers and rapists took him to the next level.
But it almost didn’t happen. Burgess sold the film rights to his book for a pittance, which became a vehicle for the Rolling Stones Mick Jagger, with Ken Russell set to direct. It didn’t happen … it would have certainly been a very different film.
When the film hit theatres during the Christmas season of 1971 the film critics were mixed and audiences didn’t really discover the film until much later. Now, like many of Kubrick’s films (he did surprisingly few during his almost 50-year career as a filmmaker), A Clockwork Orange is considered one of the great films of the 20th Century.
Bonus features are included on the accompanying Blu-ray disc and include commentary by Malcolm McDowell and Nick Redman, director Paul Joyce’s 2000 documentary titled Still Tickin: The Return of A Clockwork Orange, and a quartet of vintage featurettes — “Great Bolshy Yarblockos! Making A Clockwork Orange,” “Turning Like Clockwork,” “Malcolm McDowell Looks Back” and “O Lucky Malcolm!”
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