Stanley Kubrick Scrapbook

lC. CRrrlCS CIRCLE: '2001' AND KUBRICK Kansas City, Jan. 21.

Kansas City Film Critics' Circle voted MGM's scifi epic "2001: A Space Odyssey" the best film shown here in 1968 at a luncheon meeting. Of. the circle's 20 members 17 balloted in seven categories in their third annual selection. The group has a ~putation of being a little more "offbeat" than similar groups elsewhere, last year picking "Bonnie and Clyde" over "In the Heat of the Night," winner of most other best film awards. "The Lion in Winter," this year's N.Y. Film Critics winner, has not yet preemed in Kaycee.

In addition to top film prize, "2001" picked up the best director nod for Stanley Kubrick. Group went along with their Gotham confreres in naming Alan Arkin best actor for "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" <W7) and Joanne Woodwaro foremost tctress for "Rachel, Rachel." Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer, both of Par's "Rosemary's Baby," took the supporting acting kudos in their respective genders. Cinema S's French import "The Two of Us" was called best foreign language film.

The group includes critics from dailies, weeklies, trade, colleges and radio-television. Dr. John K. Loutbenhiser, a practicing psychologist who makes an avocation of film reviewing, is the motivator.

PICTURES

Split and Scattered Prizes Mark Moscow; Russians Didn't Understand Psychedelic Aspects of MGM's '2001' HY GENE MOSKOWITZ wegian "Scorched Earth" of Knut Moscow, July 29.

The sixth Moscow Internat:onal Anderson and to a Nigerian pie Film Festival wound up July 22 "Cabascabo'~ of Umuru Ganda. As with the handing out of awards at mentioned a s:debar nod from the the Kremlin Film Palace. · Prizes International Union of Film Techwere generally well received with nique Orgs went to "20()J.,'' with top applause to two nods for the a prize for lensing to the Bulgarian British entry "Oliver" (Col.) The "Tango" to Ivailo Trenchev and U.S. drew a blank for its official the best screenplay to the Argenentl'y "2001: Space Odyssey" (MG) tine "A Strip of Sky" from the th~mgh this film did cop a sidebar International Writer's Guild. prize. . . / Then followed a flock of sidebar Some jurists noted pnyately ~o prizes, all read from the dais.

V ARIET:' that it appeared that Russo Assn., of Filmmakers gave ldeolog1cal nods were uppermost its prize to French "A Time to 1!1 the kudos rather than the actual Live" of Bernanrd Paul for its true ~ ~mt efltflette •. c ~- . An~ · i n (ft ~ lives and to one said that some di. Pl t.. ·~ Japanelie "River Without a Bridge" Eastern blqc produ<;tions still of Tadashi Imai for its huma,e mll:naged to get specia~ awa_rds. outcry against racial discriminaAs.de from that, the discussions tion wen; frank and the lo~ level of 1 S~viet Writer's kudosed the entries wa.s . note~ which made· Czech-Russo "The Lanfieri Colsome surpnsmg prizes tenable due ony" of Jan Schmidt and there the overall lo_w art level of most were plenty of other non-official awards,· plus those to children's of th!! com~etitors. '.fhis. aside, awards w .e re films and shorts, too numerous to pnmanly felt, not to have omitt.e~ mention. However, worth singling ~ny w~rthy p.x except for Metro I out is the Soviet Composer Union 2001.. HoW'ev~r, th~t was to set prize to Lionel Bart for the a special techmcal pnze.

"Oliver" musical score.

"Best documentary" went to a Some visiting Yanks feM tha_t "2001" was a bit obvious Viet Cong pie from South Vietnam from the Yanks on the eve "!toad the Frontline" about life of the Apollo XL while others under bombardment. Yanks had to thought it an especially festswallow when audiences applauded worthy pie. However "2001" the downing of a U.S. plane. mainly seemed over the heads As fest wound the Yank delega~ of Muscovites who just did not tion was down to a handful a_nd understand its allusions and Bruce Herschenson, head of the metaphysical side, though it• USIA Film Dept., went up for the technical brllliance wu appreU.S. awards and •aired with ciated. But, said one, shots et'- British Film Producer Assn. chief the real Apollo on tv made Andrew Filson for awards to "%001" obsolete. One Yank ~lo-Ameriean pix "Oliver" and tried to explain w h at "2001.""psychedellc" meant but gave Some felt too many "promised" up. Aside from that, this year U.S. stars failed to show and mote no grand prize was given but care should be taken in the future. rather three Golden Medals Buildup aggravates letdo'tl{IL for the top pix; _.,

far ancJ awa;" the e~;i~ was the Cuban entry "Lucia" of Humberto Solas which won first P...._ . , This talented visionary looked three periods in Cuban hlsto11!: lte also collared the International WP Paris, July 29.

Critic's Award. Two other Gold winners were Italo "Serafino" of Neither of the French features Pietr-0 Germi and a Russo entry invited as official entries for com"Till Monday" of T. Rostovsky. iqg Venice Film Fest so far were It was felt that "Serafino" a look made In France. Serge Roullet's at a village dropout who beats the "Benito Cereno" ls based on the establishment at its own game, got Herman Melville tale of a slave a nod due to fine public acceptance ship and was made entirely in and by default of better pix though Brazil with non-actors, most Bi:aone jury man indicated Jacques zilian, Swedish or American, arid Tati's "Playtime" or the Magyar is a Freneh-ltalo-Brazillan copro"Walls" of Andras Kovacs merited' duction. lt more. Russo pie was a slight, · Miklos Jancso's French-Ma;.;yar gentle tale of a teacher and his pie was made by a Hungarian distudents but not felt of top worth. rector with French stars Jacques A special Golden prize was given Charrier, who also coproduced, In the memory of the late Russo Marina Vlady, Eva Swann and d 'rector :tvan Pyriev for "The Hungaro thesps. "Sirocco D'Hiver" Brothers Karamazov." He died (Winter Wind), about pre-war an, shortly before it was finished. Two archists, was made in Hungary. special jury prizes were given, one to "Oliver" of Sir Carol Reed and FULLER RETROSPECTIVE one to an East German enbV "Diary of a German Woman" of Include Two of Godard At Annelie and Andrew Throndike.

Edinburgh Fest Latt.er, a sentimental look at a woman's life in Germany, was thought a sop by most jurors from F.dinburgh, Juh 29. the West v ., L ;w,~·~~-·fl!i; u·. of the i l - of · • Easterners pushed It Iler qlJ run from Aug. 25 to best repping the fest mott.o of "For Sept. 5 at the upooming F.dinburgh Humanism in Cinema Art, For International Film Festival ProPeace and Friendship Among Na- gram includes two films by Jeantions" if it was a pean of -hate Luc Godard ("Made in U.S.A." against Nazi hangovers in Weat and "Pierrot Le Fou"l which have Germany. But it was its lack of been influenced by Fuller. true filmic merits that disconcert· "Fuller may have the power to ed festival goers when it got the attack his audience, but the connod. clusions to be drawn frOltl his films Silver Medals require participation," said a Film Two Silver Medals went to the Festival spokesman.

French "Playtime" and the YugoT~e films in week one of the slav "When Bells Start tci -Toll" festival, from Aug, 25 to 29, will of Antun VrdolJak. It again un- be "Run of the Arrow," "Steel derl~ned Yugoslavia's growing film !;lelmet," "I. Sh~~ ,.Jesse Jame~•." quality after the Grand Prize at Shock Corridor, Baron of Anthe recent Berlin Fest. zona,'' "VerbOten," "Merrill's British, Pole Actors Marauders,'' "Park Row," and Top actors were Ron Moody in "House of Bamboo."

The second week's films by Ful"Oliver" and Tadeusz Lomnickl in the Polski costume epic "Colonel ler, ,slredded for Sept. 1 to 5, are Volodyewski" of Jerzy Hoffmaa "Naked Kiss," "Fixed Bayonets," <reviewed here from Cracow re- "Pick Up on South Street," "China centlyl" with femme awards to An. Gate," "Forty Guns,'' "Hell and na Maria Pikkio for the Argentine High Water," "Underworld U.S.A.," pie "A Strip of Sky" and to a and "Crimson Kimono." , R~manian the!!P not narried m Fuller himself may attend the pn7.e hand~uts. .

Film Festival. His latest completThree Diplomas of Merit went ed film "Shark' may be shown to the Magyar "Walls," the Nor- subject to availability.

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'2001': In 35m Version I

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Even its enemies concede that not since the travelogs which introduced the process 15 years ago has there been a pie which so utilized the advantages of Cinerama projection as does Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." But the MGM pie's fllll8who tend to be youthful.. fervent and legion-have overreacted to the current episode in its playoff history, which sees the scifi epic moving into grind engagements in 35m Panavision. One thinks here especially of the Gotham radio commentator who practically .held a wake last month during pie's final day at the Cinerama Theatre. ''2001" does prove somewhat different in 35m form-but, surprisingly, not neeessarily worse. For what the "flatter" screen reveals is a whole new film-not the psychedelic "trip" so promoted by many but a tight, closely-knit, rigorously-structured narrative that basically takes the form of an anecdote.

A cosmic anecdote to be sure.

On the 35m screen "2001" reminds of nothing less than one of those chilling Robert Frost pcierns which start in everyday reality - and 14 lines later are propounding a frightening universal absolute. <"Design" is probably the best example, but the more familiar "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" can also serve.) Jn Cinerama, the pie seemed cosmic from the beginning-more like (to continue the poetic analogy) Yeats' "Second Coming" or ¡Frost's own "Once By the Pacific."

Those who see "2001" as "a film for groovin', not understandin'" (as one commentator put it) probably won't find the experience they seek in the 35m version, especially since, robbed of the Cinerama proportions for which they were de.Signed, the special effects do look more "fake." But those of its admirers who always saw the psychedelia argument anent "2001" as a lot of hogwash will be reinforced by current prints. Cinerama emphasized pie's mind-bending complexity, 35m its fable-like simplicity. "2001" ls a big enough film to acrommodate both.

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NEW MOVIES 200 l : A Space Odyssey A herd of hairy simians chatters and skirmishes beside a water hole. It is, says the screen, "The Dawn of Man." But is it? From somewhere, a strange rectangular slab appears, gleaming in the primeval sunlight. Its appearance stimulates one of the simians to think for the first time of a bone as a weapon. Now he is man, the killer; the naked ape has arisen, and civilization is on its way. With a burst of animal spirits, the bone is flung into the air, dissolves into an elongated spacecraft, and aeons of evolution fall away. It is 2001, the epoch of A Space Odyssey.

Like many sequences of this contradictory movie, the primate prologue is overlong and repetitious. Still, it serves to introduce the film's key character: the shining oblong, a mass of extraterrestrial intelligence that supposedly has been overseeing mankind since the Pliocene age. Now, in the 21st century, the mass has been identified by scientists, who have traced its radio signal back to Jupiter. A space91

KUBRICK ON "ODYSSEY" SET

Renaissance man in sci-fi.

ship, Discovery I, is dispatched to that remote planet. Aboard are two conscious astronauts (Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood) and three hibernating scientists sealed like mummies in sarcophagi. Also on board is Hal, a computerpilot programmed to be proud of his job and possessed of a wistful, androgynous voice.

Scientist Benumber. For what seems like a century the journey goes well.

Then, abruptly, Hal begins to act in an indefinably sinister manner, and the astronauts prepare to perform a lobotomy on their cybernetic buddy by removing his memory banks. But Hal discovers the plan.

Intermission. By this time, almost 1 hr. and 40 min. have passed, and the non-sci-fi fanatic may feel as benumbed as the scientists in their "hibernaculums." In depicting interplanetary flight 33 years from now, Director Stanley Kubrick and his co-scenarist, Arthur C. Clarke, England's widely respected science and science-fiction writer, dwell endlessly on the qualities of space travel; unfortunately they ignore such oldfashioned elements as character and conflict. As the ship arcs through the planetary · void it is an object of remarkable beauty-but in an effort to convey the idea of careening motion, the sound track accompanying the trek plays The Blue Danube until the banality undoes the stunning photography.

The film's best effects do not occur until the second part, but when they arrive, they provide the screen with some of the most dazzling visual happenings and technical achievements in the history of the motion picture.

Mind Bender. After a wrenching struggle, Dullea manages to disarm the mutinous Hal just as Discovery I enters the orbit of Jupiter. There he sees 92

the object of his trip-the omnipotent slab. He heads for it, and suddenly conventional dimensions vanish. An avalanche of eerie, kinetic effects attacks the eye and bends the mind. Kubrick turns the screen into a planetarium gone mad and provides the viewer with the closest equivalent to psychedelic experience this side of hallucinogens. At the end, beyond time and space, Dullea apparently learns the secret of the universe--only to find that, as Churchill said about Russia, it is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Like Space Odys$ey itself, the ambiguous ending is at once appropriate and wrong. It guarantees that the film will arouse controversy, but it leaves doubt that the film makers themselves knew precisely what they were flying at. Still, no film to date has come remotely near Odyssey's depiction of the limitless beauty and terror of outer space. Jn this 2-hr. 40-min. movie, only 47 minutes are taken up with dialogue.

The rest of the time is occupied with demanding, brilliant material for the eye and brain. Thus, though it may fail as drama, the movie succeeds as visual art and b,ecomes another irritating, dazzling achievement of Stanley Kubrick, one of the most erratic and original talents in U.S. cinema.

Mind Boggier. Since he went on his own odyssey, from Look photographer to the ionosphere of the moviemaking business, Kubrick, 39, has built a reputation for sensing-and often starting -new trends. At 27 he made a killing with The Killing, a gritty city melodrama that is still being imitated. His next project was Paths of Glory, one of the first-and best-of this generation's antiwar films. After that came two more trend setters. The first was· Lolita, a hollow, literalized adaptation of the book, for which it can be said only that it wore basic black before black comedy was fashionable. The other, Dr. Strangelove, was a major American contribution to the furiously active cinema of the absurd.

Now that Kubrick has taken off on his space kick, his fans are convinced that a sci-fi renaissance is on its way.

As the spy film sinks slowly in the West, and the western sinks rapidly into TV, studios are occupied with some dozen ambitious fantasy features, ranging from Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man with Rod Steiger, to the highcamp French comic strip Barbarella, with Jane Fonda. The next trend for Kubrick? All he will give away is that it will be "a mind boggier."

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fort that is about to be stormed in the film's big fight scene. The enraged director fires him, and arranges to have the name Hrundi V. Bakshi inscribed on Hollywood's blackest blacklist. It is inscribed instead on the list of guests to be invited to a party at the producer's house. And that is how Peter Sellers happens to show up in brownface with a mild Oriental smile and a wild Oriental eye to turn a black-tie dinner into a hectic crescendo of slapstick, sight gag, pratfall and pandemonium.

There is also occasional humor: Sellers trying to retrieve his shoe from his host's elaborate system of interior fountains and waterways; Sellers drifting from group to group, making inscrutable attempts at conversation; Sellers listening to a songstress while exhibiting a polite rictus of squirming agony because all the bathrooms are occupied. But most of the evening is just about as trite and tedious as a real-life party would have been with such a stereotyped guest list-the dumb cowboy star, the stuffy clubwoman, the fading movie queen, the international-society siren, the current sex symbol.

This 99-minute bash was filmed with a great effort at spontaneity; Sellers and Producer-Director Blake Edwards worked with a minimal script and checked each scene with instant playback on video tape. The result of the adlib approach, however, is not a swinging riot of originals but a parade of old reliables. A drunken waiter weaves around with his tray of drinks, the toy arrow with a suction cup on its end finds its way to someone's forehead as inevitably as the foaming detergent finds its way into the swimming pool.

This party, in short, is strictly for those who don't get around much.

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The Party Hrundi V. Bakshi is an Indian actor who was imported from New Delhi to play a heroic bugler in a new Bengal Lancer- Gunga Din-style movie being shot in California. This is his big chance, but he blows it-first with his bugle, when he wrecks a scene by continuing to blat out battle calls instead of dying of his wounds, then by blowing up the

SELLERS & FELLOW GUEST

Great effort at spontaneity.

TIME, APRIL 19, 1968

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Director Stanley Kubrick dazzles the eye and bends the mind in this space-age parable of the secret of life.

200 1: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Utrector 1:1n 1e Kubrick attempts to create a new language to describe the future on the screen.

His grammar is faultless, his pronunciation beautiful, his message obscure.

CINEMA

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY â&#x20AC;˘. In . a ~hilling study of the metaphysical imphcahons of space travel, Director Stanley Kubnck. deploys the most dazzling visu.al happe.nmgs and technical achievements in the history of the motion picture.

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STARTS TODAY Mat. Daily 1:30 Eve. 8:00 Only!

"Kubrick provides the viewer with the closest equivalent to psychedelic experience this side of hallucinogens I" -ll::azin•"A fan• tastic movie about man's future I An unprecedented psy· chedelic roller coaster of an ex• • l"-Lif• • k'S '2001' per1ence.

Magazine"K U b rlC is the ultimate trip I" -~~:~a.n Science

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SUPER PANAVISION

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is what makes the final segment a • total experience, Stunning as the c~ematic effects may be, the film is just as · notable, if not more so, for its thematic content. A friend remarked after seeing it that she was afraid they would show her I God and it would be true. The movie centers on man but is about the something beyond him.

I am not a theologian, but I only . know that this movie triggered the first real though about that Once in a great while, a movie un-nameable something, which I comes along which should be seen have experienced in a longtime. I again and again, and will leave do not pretend to understand the you with. something more each movie and therefore caiJ. only time you see it. "Space Odyssey: begin to relate a few of the things 2001" is one of those movies. it said to me.

Even if it is necessary to steal In the beginning, there was money· or to. flunk a test, ' man or ape-mari, primitive, everyone should makt> the short.· capable only of existing, walk down to the Cinema Within worshipping the black monolith the next two weeks. which he could not understand.

Stanley Kubrick spent five Then he learns violence and with years and an overabundance of violence, control ' of other men creative energy in the conception and to a limited extent of his own of this masterpiece. It is the most existence.

In the iTiiddle, man's control inventive use of the film media I have ever seen and has all ready · of his exi'stan·ce has transcended earned its place as a classic. the earth· and he has tried to The special effects are create a machine in his own magnificent. No detail goes image, but the machine is not unnoticed and all are done with · perfect and therefore mortal. realistic precision. Kubrick has . There is still the monolith, and truly changed an imaginary while it is still not understood, it universe and era into a reality. It is no .10nger worshipped, but is can hardly be termed science now feared and becomes an fiction. object for scientific analysis.

The final segment must be In the end~ beyond infinity, seen because it cannot be there is a day in the life, or rather described. Acquaintences have a day which is the ·life and again said that it is easily comparable to .the monolith. But now at the end any drug experience and I would and the beginning of a man's say that it is what "psychedelic" existance there is no fear. It has is all about. It is filled with things changed in to . a re signed I thought 1 would never imagine, acceptance of that which is much less see. (For instance some beyond and he can calmly reach beautiful footage of what for that which he knows he will ' conception must look like from not touch. . inside the womb.)

Words can seldom do . an A special note must be made emotional, psychological, . and of the sound. Working several , visual experience justjce and classic compositions into the . these have not even begun. Thank sound track, Kubrick gives us the · you, Mr. Kubrick, for the chance feeling that wheµ we have gone to imagine Jupiter, infinity, and beyond the earth we will still be beyond has not been given to within the reach of. its collected many' and you have made if cultural achievement. The sound available to •

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REVEAL '2001' SECRETS IN SCIENTIFIC LINGO

Though there was tight security around all its special effects aspects during the shooting of MGM's "2001: A Space Odyssey," Stanley Kubrick and his technicians are now ready to tell allthough 0111y¡ to certain parties.

While he 1 has ducked questions on such matters from the lay and even trade press, the producerdirector and two of his collaborators give a complete rundown of the special techniques in the current (June) issue of the American Cinematographer.

All the things that almost all spectators wonder about are answered, albeit in highly technical languag~how the stewardess revolves 180 degrees, why the wires aren't seen when the spacemen are floating through space, why even the most complicated 1 frames never look like "process shots," how front projection was utilized in the opening "Dawn of Man" sequence. It's believed the first time the ma~ has devoted almost all of one issue to a single film. Also first time a color cover has been run.

"2001" has elicited huge interest from the scientific and techni- 1 press. Popular Mechanics, 1 cal ~ Popular Science and Science have all run lengthy 8 â&#x20AC;˘ Journal 1, :nieces.

Spaced Out by Stanley Continued from Page I movie so technically brilliant that it fooled some people into thipking it was, in itself, a new art form. When I first saw it, I was somewhat resistant to the Dawn of Man opening (it reminded me too much of those im,maculately t1dy, ilatural-h~!itory ·museum dioramas tbat I could never quite ~lieve as a ehild). as well as to the concluding apocalypse and the birth of the star-child. 'thi,s time, howev.er, I was both charmed and moved by the man-ape sequences, and so prepared for the conclusion that I didn't feel cheated.

It's apparent after reading through "The Making of Kubrick's 2001" that the film's final ambiguity, which inspired so many delirious interpretations as to its real meaning, was the result of the editing out of logical explanations on the grounds (reasonable, I think) that wben one is dealing with things like Higher Intelligence, the Infinite and God, no logical explanations can suffice. That may or may not be genius, but it's damn good. movie • making. Most science fiction films that deal with the supernatural ftnally collapse in ground-level logic.

"2001" does not. Kubrick manages to have his cake and eat it too: he concludes his film by explaining one mystery and revealing some new ones. .

A number of critics who invoked poor old Marshall McLuhan's name to elllpla:in the impact of the movde might be chagrined to read his comment on the picture in Agel'~ l>Ook: "A movie like '2001' belongs to 1901, or even to the world of Jules Verne. It is filled with nineteenth century hardware and Newtonian imagery. It has few, if any, twentieth century qualities. This is natural. The public is not capable of being entertained by awareness of its own condition. Fish do not care to think about water, or men about air pollution."

"2001" also is a nineteenth century w0rk in McLuhan's terms, if that means a Iogfeally plotted picture with a beginning, middle and end. '.fying the movie's various sether as tightly as ts-girl, boy-los~s­ ~ is the mystery' -- 1noliths. However, Thing from outer

space is a great· ·deal mor.e: stress pill and think things interesting than any we've over...." ever met before in movie · "2-0.0 1" may be about man science fiction. ··Howard . vs. ·machine, about man's Hawks's Thing was, quite lit- que!!_t, .fpr ~temal renewal; erally, a vegetable. All of the about pllJn in an .Oediplil others I can think of 'have ~gle 'with God'the. Father, been actors dressed up in ·.ec~ but it is mostly about man centric union suits, noqe par- :now. When the film was ticularly worthy of allusions made,.· we had not yet landed (cited in the Agel book, quite on •the mt>on. However, the seriously) to Hawthorne; moon . landings have neither Sophocl~ De~es. Hem- AddeCl to nor detracted· from ingway, Hepry Jame:s, StYt"on,· the film's validity-that reGoetbe, Schopenhailet t>os· maitls fixed, as a work' of toyevskf, Melvill~.· ~ art, no tnatter what W,lppens.

Kapek,· Disney.

Tbe language ,of "2901»· is The ·visual l>eautY, pf the language of our moon "2001" escaped no one; al~ walks, our television comtbougb. 4ts wit was ignored mercials, our day-to-d11y nrby almost every~dy, includ" lationships with airline stewing Ray Br11dbury, who is ardesses and Internal Rev.quoted by Agel as saying that enue people and even, unfor"the dialogue is banal to the tunately, with the people we point of extinction (sic). . • • love. It is bleak, cold, uni just think (Kubrick) is a emotjonal and often friendly. bad writer who got in the The man who made "Lolita" way of Clarke, who is a won- and "Dr. Stcangelove" cerderful writer." tainly knew what he was doThe dialogue in "2001" is, ing in his "Space Odyssey." of course, extremely funny, "Space Odyssey" can hard'· with Kubrick dramatizing ly be described as an anti. the base state to which words gravity film. It communicates . have· sunk...:...a subject that in way5 that .all conventional Jean-Luc · -Oodard 'Can only movies communicate, through talk about in 1 his films. a sequential assimilation of In HAL, the supercQmputer images and sounds that are aboard the spaceship Discov- so arranged that we are ery, Kubrick has created the stuck-glued - to our seats perfect participant for all waiting to find out what television panel sbows and happens. next Godard's two man-in-the-street interview$. current first-run films. "Sym· In the course' of a BBC inter~ pathy for the Devil" (at th~ view, HAL will say such Murray Hill) and "One or things as "I enjoy working Two Things I Know AbQut with peopl~I have a stimu- Her''· (at the New Yorker) are lating relationship with Dr. t,rue anti-gravjty. ·films. They Poole," and, wh~n faced with are movies that have dishis own deathJas..

Poole pensed with suspense and is about to iliscoiinect Jilin); with all of the very honorall HAL can say is: "Loi>lc. . able tricks of Identification Dave, ·J can see you're ·upset that can keep us in such a about thi11. But I reaUy thirik detigh.tfuJ .state o.f fear and you should sit down~ take a anticipation while watching

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"ME AND JULIET"Susan Blanc:hard, in - the Equity Library Thcatci re· viva I of' the Rodgers _'Ind Hammerstein music:aJ- at the Master Thursay:

a conventional movie. It actually is something of an effort to sit through a Godard film, but. as a result of that effort, there is created a kind of post-screening tension between the memory of the effo~ of sitting through it and .the memory of the surprising beauties of the film itself-that keeps me returning' ti;> Godard for further assaults by words, images and ideas.

The ultimate irony of "2001" is that lt became known as the film to tum on by, which, considering its very decent psychedelic properties when viewed unstoned and sober, seems like a waste of an illicit activity. Better.

I should think, to save one's sui>J>ly for otherwise earth· llound movies such as "Air· port" or "Anne of the Thousand Pays."

'Space' As 8.0. Moon-Shot Continued from pa,e S

wanted to be "enveloped" by the psychedelic special effect& This gave the theatres involved a greater "capacity."

Moreover, a curious thing happened during most shows at most theatres when the penultimate sequence of the film - the landing on ·Jupiter often referred to as the 'tlight show" - began. Patrons seated in the balcony or in back rows of the orchestra would slowly creep down the orch aisles, finally coming to rest in the area between the first row and the screen, where 'they would lie flat on their backs in. order to experience the episode in the most head-on manner possible.

(3) "2001, 2002, 2003, etc." Repeat business was terrific. As wellreported, there were little old ladies who saw 20th-Fox's "The Sound of Music" more than 100 times. Demographically the "2001" repeats were quite the opposite teeners, hippies and young film enthusiasts .who came time and time again. "2001" became for many a new church, perhaps a new religion. At NGC-Fox Eastern's Twin South in Hicksville, L.I., manager reports that the champ is a wild-eyed young man who's been back 28 times. And there's a legend around the Metro office about another guy who comes every night. His alleged r~ason: He's determined to make a better picture than Kubrick's.

(4) "The Fume of Poppies."

Heres t.1'1.e aspect of. the "2001" playoff about which Lefko and Maron, naturally enough, are most reticent. But they'll. reluctantly admit that reports have wafted back to the MGM h.q. of managers at their wits' end anent controlling the smoking of marijuana in the b al con i e s. "2001" was and is the film where certain youth elements went to "turn on."

Big In Hippie Burgs It's no accident that in general the best dates for "2001" are on the West Coast, whose big cities are generally conceded to have the greatest concentration of hippies.

San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle are all continuing their roadshow engagements. On the other hand, the poorest dates were in such "square" burgs as Charlotte and other Southern and border state towns. Cities with great concentrations of colleges Boston, Washington et al - were great. Film continues in D.C., also in Minneapolis and Denver, both of which started a bit late.

An i n t e re s ti n g demographic study is suggested via comparison of the playoff careers of "2001" and "GWTW." Both are smashes - but each was strongest where the other was weakest. The Civil War epic's best dates were in the South; it was weakest in "sophisisticated" Northern and Western markets. Exact opposlte prevails for "2001". The audience for 'GWTW" was about the oldest Lich an audience could be and ·' film still make such money; ~01" was the youngest etc. Both got the dating crowd and mar-

==========

ried couples, but whereas groups of women alone came to "GWTW" and almost never groups of men, there were units of three or four males seen at "201H" while such distaff samplings were rare.

Of the 125 roadshow dates which the pie had, 63 were in Cinerama siD.ce only that number of towns have theatres equipped for the pr~ cess. Of these 125 hardticket bookings, 15, including those named above, continue as of this writing.

Lefko and Maron adamanlly deny trade speculation that pie was forced out of any . location to make room for Martin Ransohoff's "Ice Station Zebra," another MGMCinerama item. House nuts of 70m houses arc so huge nowadays, says Lefko, that it would have meant losing money to keep "2001" going • in any place where it was pulled.

"But we'll continue the film in any theatre, where it keeps on rooking profit," he e m p h a s i z e s . " 'Zebra' still hasn't opened in Washington an(! a number of 'other cities because '2001' is still doing well."

Judging from pie's initial 125 general release dates in 35m Panavision reduction print, its career in grind will be equal.ly as spectacular, predicts the MGM sales chief confidently. Indeed, of the $25,000,000 in rentals which he says film will generate domestically, 60% or $15,000,000 will come from general release, he predicts.

This $25,000,000 means that "2001" will break even in the domestic market alone plus make s'?veral millions in pure profit. And thus everything overseas will be pure gravy. Away on one of frequent European jaunts, MGM intel1latonal veeJJ Maur'ce <Red) Silverstein· was unavailable last week for specifics on "200l's" foreign career. ·B ut I film is known to have been a smasheroo in Britain, excellent in France and, as reeently reported herein, an i n st ant blockbuster in Italy. Industryites tend to predict at least $15,000,000 in rentals for "2001" in playoff abroad, with the possibility open that final results will equal the domestic take.

VISCONTl'S 'DAMNED' RESUME~ SHOOTING Rome, Jan. 28.

Luchino Visconti's production "The Damned" resumed production last week following a long ' hiatus.

As previously reported, production ran out of money unW saved by Dear Film's Robert Raggiag and, eventually, picktlp of world rights (except Italy> by W'l.

Filming couldn't resume until Dirk Bogarde was free from "Justine" (20th) chores in Hollywood.

Initial scenes were shot in Austria and Germany, but the new filming is being done in Rome and in nearby town of Terni. In&rld Thulin, Helmut Griem and Helmut Berger star with R""arde in the story of a German munitions \fr~. nasty.

Wednesday, January 29, 1969

• ~RIETY

PICTURES

s

'SPACE': BOXOFFICE MOON-SHOT '2001' Vis-a-Vis Oscarcade As an accompanying sto1'y demonstrates, there's no question but that Stanley Kubrick's "2001: a Space Odyssey" has passed with ease one qualifying test for serious Oscar consideration: It's a definite commercial success. Otherwi_se, Metro promoters are banking on the huge popularity of the f.ilm among newsworthy showbizites plus the, "cult" aura that has developed to help olit in the Academy campaign.

There should be a big boost next month when a New American Library paperback, "The Odyssey of '2001,'" edited by Jerome Agel, hits the stands. Of 300-350 pages it will contain major reviews, editorials and feature articles written on pie, plus letters received by Kubrick. Interviews with comu:utel' sciPnt • av.thropology, astromony, biology and engineering experts also will be included. A single "anthology" about one pie is unprecedented in film history.

Fan Letter Record At Metro they say the "fan letter" file on "2001" now contains mora than 350 entries, a record. Many of these are from celebs, university professors, technocrats. In addition there's a sizable number from extremely young people--ehildren 51h to 13 years ago. 99% are termed "emotional" and 75% c;ill it greatest pie ever made.

The celeb entries can be sampled as follows. Richard Widmark: "It is the most fantastic job of moviemaking I have ever seen." Director John Boorman: "It is unquestionably one of the greatest f.ilms ever. It changes everything, including my life .and my own films." Fellerico Fellini: "I saw yesterday your film and I need to tell you my emotion, my enthusiasm." Mia Farrow ordered 20 copies of the Playboy interview with Kubrick to send to her friend~. An irony is that the Paul Newmans (Joanne Woodward), both in competition with "2001" for tasks performed for W7's "Rachel, Rachel," enthuse about the scifier in all their recent interviews.

A 13-year old boy, Louis W. Duff of Pittsburgh, has seen the film six time'-' and· it'doing a research paper. Michael Singer, 15-year-old from Flushing, N.Y., claims to have kept a record of everything written oo--pic.

Yearend citations "from the London press are numerous. Buff mag Films and Filming called it best picture as did "Critics" show on BBC. Eight London papers named it on 10-best lists.

Citie11 where critics' groups exist-notably Antwerp and Madrid -have called it best foreign film. A highbrow piece running some 25 pages and by N.Y.U. prof Annette Michaelson appears in the February Art.forum mag. U. of Wisconsin daily newspaper devoted entire issue to "2001."

'Impossible Years' Socko Biz With Non-Sophisticates; Upsets Gotham GAMBlE ~GORING Dopesters; Helps Several Careers

KUBRICK-O'BRIEN

By STUART BYRON As Stanley Kubrick's massive While its business ls by no sci-fi epic "2001: A Space Odyssey" means u n i f o rm 1 y outstanding, ends its roadshow engagements Polk on MPAA Board and begins to enter general there seems to be no questioa Louis F. (Bo) Polk Jr., release, there remains a need to but that MGM's filmization of the MGM's new president and codify and report those factors Broadway comedy "The Impossible chief exec, was named to the which have made the Cinerama board of directors of the MoYears" is shaping as that comitem perhaps the most offbeat tion Picture Assn. of America blockbuster in the history of U.S. pany's "sleeper of the year." MGM Former prexy last week. pie playoff. By now an industryite sales chief Morris E. Lefko now Robert H. O'Brien, now board would have had to have been in pegs domestic rentals to reach at · · chairman, stays on the group, hibernation not to know that least $5,000,000 - meaning that which includes both officers MGM's feature is an outstanding the film, by a good $2,200,000, will from most of the MPAA's ·commercial success; many, be the highest-grossing n o n member companies.

-however, are unaware of the fanroadshow released by that company But Polk will replace tastic peculiarities of its playoff in 1968.

O'Brien on the executive comthus far.

The trade has been quite floored mittee of the board.

It's almost impossible only nine by the "Years" grosses. Of all of months later to recall that nervous this year's Christmas r~eases it week in April during which "2001" had been marked as the least prohad its preems in Washington, N.Y. mising, and many exhibs and L.A. But the downbeat reacreportedly refused it pr Im e tions of experienced industryites yuletide spots. But it's making it were almost unanimous whether in small- and medium-sized towns the picture was personally liked in r e 1 a t i v e 1 y "unsophisticated.. or not. A frequent lament: "I feel ·Southern, mid-Western and Southso sorry for Bob O'Brien being western territories to a surprising stuck with this $10,000,000 art degree. Chain homeoffices report film." Just about the only hopeful that in the South the onetime voices in this threnody ,were those "tough sell" is being outgrossed of Metro prexy (now board chairPauline Kael is back in her old only by W7's "Bullitt." man) O'Brien and producerTo give only a few out of many director Kubrick. In the face of form in "Trash, Art and the all those dreadful Gotham reviews Movies" in current <-February) examples, Metro has done better they remained confident that the Harper's. It's her first full-lengMi . in Little Rock, Memphis and film somehow would connect with article since she1 became a regular Columbus with "Years" than it has youth elements on a big-grossing reviewer for the New Yorker a done with any grind pie since "The year ago. A main theme is that Dirty Dozen." Although it wa11 scale.

They were right, of course. How unique to pix is a kind of non- Christmas week, the $21,000 initial much so? Metro v.p.-sales head artistic pleasure deriving from the stanza for "Years" in the Arkansas Morris Lefko now pegs "2001" for interraction of actors, dialog, etc. capital was incredible in a town domestic rentals of $25,000,000, and that a film replete with these where any five figures in a single meaning that it will outgross "How 'deserves almost as much respect week means hit biz. Same exact the West Was Won" and rank as "art"-though it should never gross was achieved at Morse Rd. fourth in company's history to be confused with "art." Recent in Columbus and at the Park iJa "Gone With the Wind,'' "Ben-Hur" fa~ in this eategory: "The Memphis.

Even Gotha.m biz has been good. nd ''.Jl®t()I' ZJtivuo." (Lefko, Scil.Phunter~ l ~"The. Thomas w.u Affair" (UA), "Wild in the Of course as Christmas attraction nlike some of his count(!~ at Radio City Music Hall 1 did at other companies, is very conser- Streets" (AIPJ. Marking the piece, however, is ·outstanding. biz - but industryites vative in his predictions. At a similar point in its playoff he pegg- (once again) Miss Kael's attack on re used to the fact that every Although he has no l n t e n t i o u . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ed "GWTW" reissue at $25,000,000; those who take "commercial" pix Yuletide pie at the Hall breaks it will now do at least $30,000,000. "seriously"-i.e1., the critica (tact- the records set by the last one. of getting out of the spy business, The Pregnant Homo On the other hand, he said "Doctor fully unnamed) who give thematic a.nd the stage show is a big plus producer Harry Saltzman ls planColumbia Pictures has acZhivago" would have outgrossed analysis to pix by such as Alfred factor.- "Showcase" run begun last ning to enter a new film area quired ftlm rights to the Brit"Ben-Hur" by the end of '68; it Hitchcock. This has never been Wednesday was rated fine; three Miss Kael's own critical style, but other s11ch breaks began the same the young musical group category lsh play, "Spitting Image." missed by only $500,000.) she seems to feel that it ls not -day (U's "Secret _Ceremony," W7'1 which has previously been dom· The Colin Spencer farce, Those factors which, In the only an erroneous approach but "Rachel, Rachel,'' UA's "The Night lnated by the ftlms of The which deals. with two homofirst few months of Its playoff, one which "kills" the pix for ~hey R a i de d Minsky's") but sexuals one of whom becomes helped "2001" to begin its Beatles and, to a lesser extent, by ordinary filmlovers.

"Ye a rs" averaged $9,000 per The Monkees. pregnant, opened originally in spectacular career have been house. Christmas run at five Saltzman will join forces with a Hampstead theatre club amply reported herein: the Also embedded in the piece ts Boston houses resulted in $58,733 music and recording entrepreneur and moved to a West End thecelebrity fans, the "second Miss Kael's long-awaited attack on f h l"d · k $50 768 10 · th 9 Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space stanza or 0 after i ay wee Don Kirshner to make a series atre where it had a brief run. look" notices by critics who that •and •$35,276 for had originally panned It, the Odyssey" (MGMl. Calling pie "a week ending Jan. 14. Considering of musical adventure films starring Columbia will also team up splendid out-of-town reviews, a new group called Tomorrow. The with producer Zev Bufman the mounting evidence of a celebration of cop-out" and opin- the· pie and the town, this was first film, to be coproduced by to stage the N.Y. legit version !:1g that the P.roducer~irector a delightful surprise. at the Theatre de Lys. The growing ":routh cult." What Saltzman and lCirshner, with the built e~ormous science-ftcbon sets Who's going? Film has often title "Tomorrow:.• aets underway play, directed by Derek Goldhas not previously been do~nd equipment, never even bother- 'been termed the anti-"Graduate•• . "' cumei:tted is the In England in April for release by, went into rehearsals Tues. unprecedented manner 1 n mg to figure out wha~. he _was go- In that it's a generation-gap comby United Artists.

(21) for a Feb. 19 opening which the film performed in ing to do with the~, l\;liss Kael edy which takes the parents' point The group, formed by SaJtzman with Sam Waterston· and playoff. Never before has a also call~, t~e ft~ s bght-show of view. But . teenage attendance and Kirshner after seven months Walter McGinn in the two lead pie so gone against so much sequence third-rate as compared is reported heavy. to the work of experimental filmAs an incidental factor pie of auditioning, consists of an Ausroles. practical experience. Accordtralian girl. Olivia Newton - John, Inc to Letko and Metro maker J.ordan Belson. "If big ftlm .should help the careers of several ~irectors are to get credit for do- attached to it. and young -.._Britisher roadshowthesales Mel Vic three Cooper andmales Americans Karl Maron, mainmanager offbeat facmg badly what others have been For David Niven whose recent Chambers and Ben Thomas. All tors include these: doing brilliantly for years with pix have had varying boxoffice hisfour -sing and play instruments.

(1) "The Grind Roadshow." Al- no money, just because they've tories, it should provide a needed Chambers' specialty is the drums, though "2001" was a reserved-seat put 1t on a Wg screen, then busi- shot in the arm. Pie reinforces attraction, it -didn't behave like nessmen are greater than poets producer Lawrence Weingarten's Cooper piano and organ and Thomas, guitar. one. The teeners and hippies who a~d theft is art," she concludes. reputation, but probably raises that "Tomorrow" will be written and came out in droves plunked their Film opened in N.Y. during the of director Michael Gordon. When directed by Ernest Pintoff who has money down at the boxoffice as months (March • August) when added to the 1966 hit "Texas one feature credit, "Harvey Midthey would for a general release. Penelope· Gilliatt ls regular New Across the River," current effort, as a rival comedy helmer in from dleman, Fireman," an upcoming tv "I'd call a theatre at noon," says Yorker reviewer.

Hollywood last week confirmed, special on Sholom Aleichem, and

By AUBREY TARBOX Lefko, "and when I'd hear only makes Gordon a "hot property'' numerous short subjects. The 300 seats were sold for the evening young foursome, whose average Going along with the trade quip show I'd feel pretty gloomy. Then, again, a position the once-blacklisted director hasn't really enage is 22, was introduced to the that today'1 film producers "staxt the next day I'd discover we went joyed since 1959's "Pillow Talk." press in N.Y. yesterday (Tues.) by at the top" as boss, former literary clean.''

He's recently been signed to guide Saltzman and Kirshner. The for- agent Lester Linsk regards his The theatre-party audience so Jackie Gleason in ABC's "How Do mer, who's best known as the inessential for roadshows of ordinary Washington, Jan. 28. · J ames Bond work on "The Games" for 2-0th- stripe had to be forgotten. Older t ro d u~r of f i·1 m spies U.S. Information Agency ls en- [ Love Thee?" and Han:y Palmer, said that the Fox as excellent on-job training and affluent couples did not progroup, and the films and record- for him. It's his debut chore as a vide much of the film's audience. tering two ftlms in the annual Holings with which they'll be associat- producer. Three further projects "This wasn't a picture for the :Ha- lywood Academy Awards competied, will offer a new musical sound are on his agenda. dassah girls," says Maron. tion, a 34-minute documentary as well as an original concept in Linsk came lnto production via (2) "The Sellable Unsellable•." filmmaking. the sale of his former client Irving When a roadshow· reports "capac- called "Peace Corps in the Majya" Retiring MGM assistant general "The films will be al m-e d Wallace's tome, "The Plot" to Fox. ity" biz, It's really not counting and a 14-minute documentary primarily at the 14-30 year-old age As it turns out this will be the the first 10 or so rows of the called "April Aftermath." sales manager Herman Ripps was group,'' he added, '/the group third pie on his current agenda. orchestra, ·considered unviewable The Peace Corps effort was pro- feted with a farewell luncheon last known to be the largest segment He remarked this week that his seating because of the hugeness duced in color for USIA by Walter week at N.Y.'s Hotel Warwick. of the filmgoing public." The pro- new role only fills him with excite- of the 70m screen and thus never De Hoog and Hearst Metrotone and Newly-elected prexy Louis F. (Bo) durer, who's currently winding ment and that "The Games" with even put on sale. If anything this deals with four volunteers in Polk Jr. and other top execs at"The Battle of Britain" and,· with it11 international cast and look at is even more true when the deeply- Africa. The other film, also in tended the affair, at which Ripps Albert R. Broccoli, the new James the public and private lives of a curved Cinerama screen ls involv- color, was produced by USIA itself was gifted with a 16m aound Bond film, "On Her Majesty's Se- group of Olympics' runners has ed. But that front area was just and ls about reaction to the assas- . camera. cret Service" (with a new James. the potential to be "a success in where thousands of • '2 O o 1 's'' sination of Martin Luther King.

Ripps, with Metro for 33 yeara, Bond - Australian George Lazen. all the world's major markets." He greatest fans wanted to sit. They· USIA won an Oscar in 1965 for plans a move to Southera Call(Continued on page 19) (Continued on page 281 (Continued on page 110 "Nine From Little Rock." fornia.

Sez Paulene Kael:

Kubrick 'Followed' Belson Experiment

Spy Pie Showman Saltzman And Diskman Kirshner In Youth Music Adventure Films

Lester L1·nsk On All He's Leamm·g As a Producer

U.S. INFO OFFERS 2 FOR ACAD ATIENTION

MGM'S HERMAN RIPPS TOASTED ON EXIT

Spaced Out Dy Stanley BJ VINCENT

CANBY

N en IND illldJway station on the Upper West Side. a place so ancient and damp it has its own tiny ill&Y stalactites hanging from • celling, there it a sort of bPse ·poster tor the New York City Transit A.~tltority ~oves Millions") on whl~ oie C()uple has published its

I

}>Jns (~'Sonia + W'ade''), and on which a closet revolution~ .ty, a furtive futurist with a ~ marker pen, has prodiimed: "We want anti· (f.avity caral The wheel ii.00.

~I''

lust because some wh!els some ef 'the •eels OD IND c:ars-ere <lJ>.. ~te,' it doesn't necessarl\y f~ow that all wheels are o~ ~ And, similarly, juSt ~e some conventional

...f·especla11y

n\Ovies are obsolete. one can't say that ~ey all have to ~· .that w~ should, In effed. re~ct

grams to Kubrick about the

film (Federico Fellini: •'I need to tell you my emotion my enthUllasm stop I wish ·you the best luck ·IQ your path''), J.r.. thur C. Clll'llle'1· 1950 short story ("The Sentinel; that served u the basis of the .screent>~. <>Pe of thole endless ftlAY'bQy .taPed intetviews with Kubrick, lists of agencies and companies that contributed technlcal data to the prodadiOn,. a poem inspired by the movie, interviews with movie·~ scientists and physicists, the last .paps of Clarke's · novel (bued oia the Kubrick· Clarke screen play from which Clarke removed the film'• concluding ambiguities), and one ending for the movie that wu coosidered and finally discarded by Kubrick.

In some ways the book is as chaotic (it has no ~x.

but then indexes simply aren't fashionable in most film books these days) and as terribly precious as the McLuhan-Fiore ''The Medium Is the Massage," whtcb Agel "edited and coordinated.• ·However, everything about tile ~ok, including the ~­ tion devoted to reviews and le-reviews, communicates a sense of the film's excitement and of the excitement of

nio'9ie-making as a sometimes baffling. sometimes inspired. sometimes drearily methodi· cal p~ of collectiye ere· ation. .

Just as I had thought when I first saw ..Space Odyssey" at the Qapitul Theatft' two years. .ego, the film. on a retum ·v isit, tome out to be an absolutely marvelous science fiction fantasy, full of wit and irony aml -poetry, and a Continued on Page 21

ourselves to anti-..,,.

itv movie& For one thing. rm

not sure that many of us would agree on wb1cb filma

are conventional and which 81'8 tnlly revolutionary, that is. entertiainments flt ·for lib· etat.d. space age percep,tfons. These thoughtl are ~ted by a return visit, JI days ago, to see ~ Xul>rict-s "2001: A sp&ce Odyssey" end by the publl· CJtion of "'The-Makinl" Of '.Kubiick'1 2001," .· ~ 36l-itege &fPet paperba~ ($1~). fJd• itt!d b)' Jerome Agel. The mo.te, which was p1aytnc a return enp1ement at the Ziegfeld Theater when I saw itt C8ll be seen In 70 mm, with lltereo IC)Und, at the Pammus 4 'Iheater, Paramus.

N. J., end. atafting Wednes~ at the Syoaet 'Jbeater,

,,..._,L.J. ""l'he Making of Kubrick's 2oc)l• fo8ows the curious

qimmercild. course of the film daat openecJ In lfew York sm oAal'JI .. l-toilllft09f tman-

. . pans from the dafly Pnlill and ttlen went on to become a C1dt fUlll. a head film, a film -~ by, and • 111\aShlng cormnerclal s"'c;cea · -.,i~- f t S,985,000).

= ,.....In..,,. ....,....

~~=:iobooi!

...." a New Yorker piofiJe tit Kabrick.

1rith • tefters and ete-

NEW MOVIES 200 l : A Space Odyssey .A ~erd of hairy simians chatters and skirmishes beside a water hole . It ~ . says th e screen, "The Dawn of M ,, B t .. ? F an. u is it. rom somewhere, a strange rectan~lar slab appears, gleaming in th.e primeval sunlight. Its appearance stimulates one of the simians to think for the first tin:ie of a bone as a weapon. Now he is man, the killer; the ~aked . ape has arisen, and civilization is .~n its way. Wit'i a burst of animal spmts,. the bone is flung into the air, dissolves mto an elongated spacecraft and aeons of evolution fall away. It is ZOOl, the .epoch of A Space Odyssey.

L!ke many sequences of this con!rad1ctory movie, the primate prologue is overlo!lg and repetitious. Still, it serves to introduce the film's key character: the ~hining oblong, a mass of extraterrestrial intelligence that sup~sedly has .been overseeing mankind smce the Pliocene age. Now, in the 21st centu~, ~he mass has been identi- j tied by sc1enttsts, who have traced its radio signal back to Jupiter. A space- J

I

r

\ I

Workings of An Idle Mind "2001: A Space Odyssey" is a remarkable film, of enor· mous ingenuity, but it's easy to see why it has created so much controversy as to its worth.

The New York film critics hated it. The other critics around the country loved it.

Some people who see it walk out after the intermission.

Others come back and see it again and again. (Beatie John Lennon claims he sees it once a week.)

It is the No. 1 box office bit in the country and, like it or not, it must be seen by anyone with even a passing interest. in what's happening in films today. "2001" is where it's at, Baby.

It is like no other film yoo've ever seen. Director-writer-pro. ducer Stanley Kubrick has con.sciously subordinated all of the traditional dramatic d~ices. plot, theme, characterization, dialogue - to the visual impact of his material.

It is, essentially, a contemporary documentary of the future. Sitting in your theater seat, you are taken on a trip through space, and beyond, into infinity - nothing less.

Complaint~ that you <ran't identify with the characters or that the theme is fmzy or the dialogue mundane are ir· relevant.

Jf someone called you up and said a flying saucer just landed in his backyard and invited you to come over and take a look, you would.

You wouldn't expect the saucer to have a plot or clever dialogue; you'd go because you wanted to see what it looked like.

That's why you should go and see "2001" - to see what it looks like.

The special effects and the use of the wide-widescreen are so effective that you forget about them. You never say to yourself, "Oh, look at that. I wonder how he did it."

You simply accept the fact that you're sitting out there in space watching this spaceship cruise along in profil~.

Still, for people who go to the movie house to watch things happen to other peopple, rather than to have things happen to them, it is a difficult film.

Just as the eye schooled in academic realism does not easily accept abstract paintihg, so 1 the movie-goer raised on literary films does not readily respond to purely visual films.

And "2001" is a purely visual film, the world's first $5-mil• lion underground movie.

Plays ·Trick on Viewers

By James Arnold

.•

In "A Clockwork Orange," Stanley Kubrick returns to the devastating ironic pessimism, the fleeful misanthropy of "Dr. Strangelove" that was only temporarily obscured in "2001" because there was an omnipotent Monolith in outer space capable of transforming man's malevolent nature.

Kubrick's darkest trick in his smash hit now film is play· ed on the audience.

He forces them to admit that a degenate hodlum, monstrous but free, is a more attractive human being than one who is socially enginered to see the monstrous as monstrous.

Further, says "Orange," in a brutal society you can choose only two roles, killer or victim, crucifier or crucified.

Concede which you prefer to be. The law is written in your heart, beneath the .civilized veneer: Better to hurt, than be hurt.

So the audience is caught rooting for a rapist-murderer, and the knowledge of this carries its own moral.

"Orange" does briefly suggest a third alternative, the man who is free to choose the good. But it is unclear how such a man could arise in mod· ern society, or how he could avoid the same fate as the conditioned conformist. (History records that the really major crucifixions have been saved for saints.)

In the film the suggestion comes from a prison chaplain, an Ange.lic:an priest who Is badly bungling the ho.,.less job of reforming his cynl· cal congregation. Virtue, freely chosen, is not really a viable option in Kubrick's horror-universe. As one character says, It's not an economical solution to. the problem of law and order.

"Orange," adapted from the An· thony Burgess novel, is a moral fable set in near-future England. It is

science-fiction of the extrapolative type, i.e., its projects current trends to their logical outcomes.

The city is a debris-strewn, partly abandoned jungle, roamed by gangs of young brutes seeking violence and sex for the fun of it. Parents are distracted and permissive. Police, when they appear, are thus of t~ "Dirty Harry" type or worse.

Sexual taboos are gone: the old art is defaced by obscene graffiti, the new art is pornographic. Drugs are dispensed in a milk bar where the furniture is molded of erotic female forms.

'Let Ge'

Soc~ety has 'let go.' Pop· culture and conversation are cretinized.

Kubric's first "movement" is to describe, in most dire detail, the moral state of his hero, a gang leader named Alex (Malcolm McDowell) We watch him perform several graphic outrage~ll the more terrifying because performed in a spirit of· whimsey and fun.

Despite the horror, it all has Kubrick's patented comic edge. Alex has a pet snake who sleps on his bed.

He is addicted to Beethoven, the greatest product of western culture, but it merely spurs his imagination to greater debauchery and blasphemy.

Mo~ie art has no effect either.

Alex sings and dances to the beloved "Singln' In the Rain" as he cheer· fully leads a sadistic gang-rape. So much for the cMllzlrfl value of art.

The second "movement" describes what society does to Alex after it convicts· him for murder. (First, his social worker, a rejected homosexual, cheers). Then prison takes him, with its sterile surface regimentation and inner corrup~ion. He butters Up the chaplain, and when he is exposed to the Bible, fantasizes himself in all the evil roles. (So much for the effect of religion.)

Finall)r science comes to his "rescue" with a conditioning treatment designed to make him sick of sex, violence and Beethoven. (Kubrickian irony: the trick is achieved by forcing him to watch sex-violent films some-

what like the one we ourselves are watching.)

Humiliation

But all this merely turns Alex into a helpless and humiliated victim, tormented now by all those he had tormented before. (Poetic justice?

Watch out-that means only that a victimizer becomes a victim, and violence becomes "justifiable".)

Alex becomes a political pawn, and we see a deeper horror, another kind of dehumanization, the destruction of . human character and free will for social ends. It semes as sinful and sadistic as any of Alex's crimes, and it is as cheerfully done. We are almost relieved when the government (to mollify public opinion!) puts him back the way he was-listening to Ludwig Van and en~isioning higherclass orgies than before.

As a philosopher, Kubrick is grim, but he Is a peerless graphic artist.

Watching "Orange' 'is like standing in the surf getting slapped by waves for 140 minutes. This is not a film for the squeamish, and Indeed the director may be accused with some justice of detailing the degradation beyond all sensible limits.

But I think the use of extremes shows the ferocity of Kubrick's anger.

In any case, be forewarned: the movie is an ordeal, a stomach-churning trip like Fellini's "Satyricon." It's not a turn-on.

For all its art, its attempts to aestheticize violence by turning it into a kind of ballet set to music, and surreal fun and ·games, prevents a aesthetic, linking real brutality to undercut it with ironic humor, "Ora,nge" plays with fire. Its very moral reaction that really ought to occur, and puts violence in a strangely perverted context of enjoyment that is chilling to sit through.

Future Shock Philosophically, the film is best taken as a warning. This is not yet where we are--where we have no choice but to be cruel to each other -but it is a nightmare of where we could be going.

.-

MOVIES

From the Gut

.â&#x20AC;˘

The opening frames of Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" fix Malcolm McDowell in menacing close-up as the scary Alex, one eye peeking from under a bowler hat, a sneering mouth radiating an air of venom that sounds the perfect tonic chord. Arrogance verging on insolence has been McDowell's trademark ever since his brilliant film debut as Mick, the prep-school revolutionary in Lindsay Anderson's "H ..." Kubrick saw "If .. ." and, as he read Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel, he saw McDowell and no one else as Alex, the violent Teddy Boy hero. "I thought of Malcolm immediately," says Kubrick. "If I hadn't gotten him for the part, I don't know whether I'd have been able to make the movie." McDowell's performance, a dazzling mixture of intellect and instinct, justifies such admiration and promises to make the 28-year-old son of a Leeds pub owner the most sought-after young actor in Great Britain.

"I read the novel and then the script and then the novel again and I thought, 'I don't know what the hell I'm going to do'," he told NEwswEEK's Paul D. Zimmerman recently at his airy, spacious London duplex. "You see, Alex isn't a real person. He's more of a cartoon character. And yet I had to make him believable without making him realistic."

In this McDowell succeeded brilliantly.

'Tm not into the Stanislavsky approach, you know, taking your character home with you and searching for your soul and all that. That's bull!" says the outspoken McDowell. "The feelings you produce have got to come from the gut.

And once they're there, you've got to hold them in without losing them."

Arctic: "A Clockwork Orange" was an ordeal of pain .and stamina for McDowell.

The conditioning scenes, in which Alex is forced to watch films of violence while wearing clamps on his eyelids, were minimally bearable only because anesthetic drops were constantly washed over his eyes to kill the pain. The sequence in which Alex is held under water by his pals was conducted in arctic temperatures; the water was really a freezing tub of bouillon, and his mouth was fixed to an' air mask to save him from drowning. Kubrick shot 25 takes of a scene in which Alex's parole officer spit point blank in his face until the saliva landed precisely on McDowell's lip. And, worst of all, a sequence in which an actor stomps Alex to prove the young hoodlum has been tamed resulted in a case of crushed ribs and ripped chest cartilage that knocked Malcolm off the picture for three weeks. "To me, acting is more hard work than soul-se'arching," he says.

Unlike' most actors, McDowell had no early inkling of his professional destiny, but his life prepared him for acting nonetheless: Born in the riorth of England, his

Newsweek, February 14, 1972

father sent him south to school, where his thick accent invited derision and bullying. "I realized I had to change myself to fit in," he says. "I adapted fast."

Also at school he developed the character of the arrogant manipulator that was to find its echo in his two best roles to date. "I always felt superior to the others at school," he says. "I had the smug feeling that if I had to do something I could do it." One of those things he could do was play Rugby, "which got me out of Saturday morning Latin. I was always trying to manipulate the powers that be."

Another thing he could do was act.

"We used to talk after lights out," he recalled, "about what we were going to be.

playing several years of stock before trying out for the lead in "If ... " In his audition, the girl opposite him slapped him hard. "She knocked the crap out of me so I really went after her," he recalls. "I became an animal." And he got the part.

After "If ..." McDowell made a shallow chase movie for Joseph Losey, "Figures in a Landscape," that turned out to be a disaster and convinced him "never to do a film about which I had any doubts." Next he gave a finely shaded performance as the paraplegic lover in Bryan Forbes's maudlin "Long Ago, Tomorrow." "The film was successful, whatever one thinks of it," he says diplomatically. "And I got all these letters from girls saying, 'Even though you're in a wheelchair, xou're the kind of man I could go for'.

Like most actors, McDowell hopes to parlay his success into a directing career. "You can't be an actor all your life," he says. "You'll go up the wall. If you want to really say what you have to say, you can only do it by directing. But that's all a matter of timing. I'm not ready yet.

The time's not right."

Until then, McDowell husbands his energies and talents, always holding back a little in each performance. "You should never give everything," he says, "because once you've done that there's no place to go. If you don't have the feeling that there's something unknown left inside you, then you've had it. Even if I was told this was my last acting job, I still don't think I'd give everything."

Taylor Made

McDowell: Intellect and instinct When it got to me, I said, 'I think I'll go into advertising and, if I fail, I can always be an actor'." But, upon gFaduation, he took up less glamorous work, selling coffee to stores in Yorkshire. "I didn't realize it but it was great training for acting," he says. "I learned to change my religion, my politics and my personality with everyone I met in order to make a sale. It was a loathsome, lonely, hateful period of my life but I got a script out of it." This script has become the basis for his next film, "O Lucky Man," in which he will star, again under Lindsay Anderson's direction.

Slap: Malcolm started taking elocution lessons because his girl friend at the time was taking them, then won a place in a provincial repertory company that played on a pier on the Isle of Wight.

"I often think about those poor bastards in the audience who paid 5 shillings to watch me learn to act." But he did learn,

If you missed Elizabeth Taylor in her great roles-Maggie the love-starved wife in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,'' Gl01ia the high-class tramp in "Butterfield 8," Martha the viper-tongued bitch in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"-you can catch her as all three in x, Y & ZEE. Edna O'Brien's original script takes place in the more repellent upper reaches of swingtime Lond~n, where Taylor's architect-husband (Michael Caine) has taken up with a demure young widow who runs a boutique (Susannah York), and somehow his infidelity represents a challenge such as Elizabeth has never had before.

She is more than up to it. Outfitted in low-cut gypsy dresses, lacquered in green eye make-up and armored with clanking jewelry, she discharges loaded ironies, jets off to Spain for some philandeiing of her own and bombards Caine with any object at hand. She even slashes her wrists and lets the bathtub overflow. But it's all no avail until she hits on the perfect weapon-her (you guessed it) body. And who is the unlucky-though not unwilling-object of her ultimate offensive? Why, sweet Susannah, of course, who was once booted out of boarding school for falling in love with a nun. Now that's something not even Elizabeth has ever done. Perhaps next time?

Y!

-CHARLES MICHENER

89

"

Mo,•le Mailbag

Where Do Yon Stand on 'Orange'?

To

THE EDITOR:

V

INCENT CANBY admirably points out the satirical implications "A of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange." But qayton Riley persists in analyzing fragments of the .film rather than looking at it as an organic whole.

What upsets me most about Riley's futile exercise in dissecting this movie is his obsession that "A Clockwork Orange" is a handbook which teaches our inviolate society how to be violent.

Even allowing Riley to view the film as a non-satirical work, the basic frame of reference is still obscure to him. This movie is not merely an example of futuristic fiction; it has its roots in a genre of fantasy. If Riley chooses to deny writers and filmmakers freedom to fantasize, he should feel nauseated when the big bad wolf sleeps in grandma's bed and wants to eat Little Red Riding Hood.

DANIEL MURRAY Yonkers, N. Y. "DROP THE MASK"

To THE EDITOR: Clayton Riley brilliantly isolated the basic weakness of "A Clockwork Orange" its total lack of profundity.

At best, the film was the dubious triumph of technique over thought; at worst, it was an encounter session for a host of critics who discovered they were not the ority ones who were confused about morality.

Those who found ".Orange., profound would find any prophecy; messianic or arbitrary, equally profound. But

where is the profundity in understood not only the mopredicting a morally ambiva~ tion picture, but the entire lent future that already ex- idea of art and personal artisists? Let's not forget that one tic value and interpretation. of our leading novelists has I do not think Vincent ealled·Charlie Manson a "deep Canby would "set up a Raskolnikovian character," camera and leave his door th'ereby giving him a literary , unlocked at the first reports" dimension he previously of an attack on his neighborlacked. Is the Alex of hood simply because he both "Orange" any different? In an appreciated and identified age wh~n a Map.son can be- with Kubrick's brilliant and come a Raskolnlkov, snrely a creative handling of brutality, rapist-murderer can be a and violence in "A Clockwork Orange." I do not think Canby tragic hero.

Shall we an drop the mask would do this any more than and candidly admit that would a person Seek to blow "Orange" caters to the ni- up a train after viewing hilism, frustration and moral "Lawrence of Arabia." ambivalence that have racked Riley has misunderstood our consciences since the the fact that violence, sex, mid-sixties? But is that any murder, rape, and war, though and horrible reason to vote it Best Film Or disgusting plagues, can be used as a the Year?

BERNARD F, DICK potent artistic tool. If, in the Associate Professor. continuity of "A Clockwork English Dept., Orange," you cannot derive, Fairleigh Dickinson Upive'rsity frorr,t its violence, a deeper more enlightened understandTeaneck, N.·J. . ing of Alex, his times, his "MISUNDERSTOOD" aesthetics, and his weakTO THE EDITOR: nesses, then you are lazy and The fact that Clayton Riley should not be allowed to inis an iconoclast just for the· terpret or pass judgment 01;1 sake of it does not bother me. the ultimate philosophical There are, after all, people meaning of a film. who are not secure unless You, Mr Riley, want to they are bathing in the wa~ see only the face-value of the ters of iconoclasm. More brutality in "A Clockwork power to these people: most Orange." Fine. You do that. of us can see through their But do not condemn or mock facades and, from their com- those who find important and mentaries, get a ch11ckle or profound interpretations in two: the action of ''Clockwork."

But, gentlemen, I did not JEFFREY RovIN laugh when I read Riley's re- Norwalk, Conn. view of "A Clockwork Orange"; I cried. Not because of "A Clockwork Orange," its violence, and its attitude toward brutality, and not because the film was enigmatic.

No. I cried because Riley mis-

joyed being sickened, as he put it, and disoriented, by the antics of Awful Alex and his arrogant atrocities.

Since I cannot hope that Canby was alone In his re~tions, there must be quite a few folks walking around who would really doig De Sade, and groove on Gilles de Rais (hey, there, foetusfetishists!). And then thett'!! • always Jolly Jack the Ripper, and his truly creative carving, and imaginative Ian Brady, that cute little rascal.

Not to mention Good-Time Charlie Manson and his little combo of cut-ups. If you dig free will, these boys really had what it takes, oh wow!

JULIANA BUONOCORE

New York City

'Orange' Author Continued from First Page

t1ress; 'f:ie Is ·~ri)etrattng a gros~ heresy;

It seems to me in accordance with the

tradition that Western man is not yet ready to jettison, that the area in whicli human _choice is.a possibility should be extended, even if one comes up against new angels witll swords and banners emblazoned No. The wish to diminish free will is, I should· think, the sin against the Holy Ghost.

In both film and book, the evil that the state performs in brainwashing Alex is seen spectacularly in its own Jack of self-awareness as regards nonethical values. Alex is fond of Beethoven, and he has used the Ninth Symphony as a stimulus to dreams of violence. This has been his choice, but there has been nothing to prevent his choosing to use that music as a mere solace or image of divine order, That, by the time his conditioning starts; he has not yet made the better choice, does not mean that he will never do it.

But this evil is a human evil, and we recognize in his deeds of aggression potentialities of our own-worked out for the noncriminal citizen in war, sectional injustice, domestic unkindne~s, armchair dreams. In three ways Alex is an exempli)r of humanity: He is aggressive, he loves beauty, he is a languageuser. · Ironically, his name can be taken to mean "wordless," though he has plenty of words of his own, invented, groupdialect. He has, though, no word to say in the running of his community or the managing of the state: He is, to the state, a mere object, something "out there" like the moon though not so passive.

Theologically, evil is not quantifiable.

Yet I posit the notion that one act of evil may be greater than another, and Choice Taken Away that perhaps the ultimate act of evil is dehumanization, the killing of the soul But, with an aversion therapy which -which is as much as to say the capaassociates Beethoven and violence, that city to choose between good and evil choice is taken away from him forever. acts. Impose on an individual the capaIt is an unlooked-for punishment and it city to be good and only good, and you is tantamount to robbing a man-stukill his soul for, presumably, the sake of social stability. · pidly, casually-of his right to enjoy the divine vision. For tlfe)'e is a good What my, and Kubrick's, parable tries beyond more ethical good, which is alto state is that it is preferable to have a ways existential; there is the essential world of violence undertaken in full good, that aspect of God which we can awareness-violence chosen as an act prefigure more in the taste of an apple of will-than a world conditioned to be or the sound of music than in mere good or harmless. I recognize that the right action or even charity. lesson is already beco.ming an old-fashioned one. B. F. Skinner, with his abiliWhat hurts me, as also Kubrick, ls ty to believe that there is something bethe allegation made by some viewer11 yond freedom and dignity, wants to see and readers of "A Clockwork Orange•the death of autonomous man.

J.hat there is a gratuitous indulgence in He may or may not be right, but in violence which turns an intended homterms of the Judeo - Christian ethic· , -iletic work into a pornographic one. It that "A Clockwork Orange" tries to exwas certainly no pleasure to me to de-

l\Cribe a.ct$ pf yi9l~1.\c~. 'fP!'!P wr!t,l~g !;be novel: I ln<hiig'et:r in excess, "in' eati~ cature, even in an invented dialect with the purpose of making the vf_~ olence more symbolic than reali.iic, and. Kubrick found remarkable cinematic equivalents for my own lite~ de.vices. · 'rt would have been pleasanter, and would have made more friends, if there had been no violence at all, but the stpry of Alex's reclamation would have IC>St force if we weren't permitted to see what he was being reclaimed from. For my own part, the depiction of violence was intended as both an act of catharsis and an act of charity, since my own wife was the subject of vicious and mindless violence in blacked-out London in 1942, when she was robbed and beaten by three GI deserters. Readers of my book may remember that the auUior whose wife is raped is the author of' a work called "A Clockwork 01'ange~"

Viewers of the film have been disturbed by the fact that Alex, despite his viciousness, is quite likable. It hasrequired a deliberate self-administered act of aversion therapy on the part. of some to dislike him, and to let .righteous indignation get in the way of human charity. The point is that, if we aJ,"~ going to love mankind, we will h~ve . to love :Alex as a not unrepresentative member of it.

The place where Alex and his mirrori:mage F. Alexander are most guilty of hate and violence is called HOME, and it. is here, we are told, that charity ought to begin. But toward that mechanism, the state, which; first, is concerned with self-perpetuation and, second, is happiest when human beings are Pt:edictable and controllable, we have no duty at all, certainly no duty of charity.

I have a final point to make, and this will not interest many who like to think of Kubri.ck's "Orange" rather

than By.rgess'., Th~ ta.ngiiage or. ~th movie ar.td bobk (l:alled . Nadsat.....:..the Russian "teen" suffix as iii pyatnadsat, meaning 15) is no mere colorful decoration, nor is it a sinister indication of the Sl,lbliminal power that a Communist superstate may already be exerting on the young. It was meant to turn "A Clockwork Orange" into, among other th~ngs, a brainwashing primer. You read the book or see the film, and at the end you shou].d find yourself in possession of a minimal Russian vocabulary -without effort, with surprise.

This is the way brainwashing works.

I chose Russian words because they blend better into English than those of French or even German (which is already a kind of English, not exotic enough). But the lesson of the •orange" has nothing to do with the ideology or repressive techniques of Soviet Russia; it is wholly concerned with what can happen to any of us in the West, if we do not keep on our guard.

Something of Value If "Orange," like "Nineteen EightyFour," takes its place as one of the salutary literary warnings-or cinematic" warnings - against flabbiness, slof)py thinking, and overmuch trust in the state, then it will have done something of value. ' For my part, I do not like the book as much as others I have written: I have kept it, till recently, in an unopened jar -marmalade, a preserve on a shelf, rather than an orange on a dish. What I would really like to see is a film of one of my other novels, all of which are singularly unaggressive, but I fear that this is too much to hope for.

It looks as though I must go through life as the fountain and origin of a great film, and as a man who has to insist, against all opposition, that he is the most unviolent creature alive. Just like Stanley Kubrick.

Author Has His Say on 'Clockwork' Film The brilliant English novelist Anthony Burgess, who wrote "A Clockwork Orange" in 1961, soon sold off the movie rights. Although not involved in either the making or the earnings of Stonley Kubrick's film version, he admires and defends it, as he explains in this article written for The Times.

BY ANTHONY BURGESS • I went to see Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" in New York, fight-

ing to get in like evefyb_9dy else. It was

worth the fight, I thought_;,.very much a Kubrick ·movie, technically brilliant, thoughtful, relev~nt, poetic, mind-opening. It. was possible for me to see the work as a radical remaking of my own povel, not as a mere interpretation, and this-the feeling that it was no impertinence to blazon it as "Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange"...:...is the best tribute I can pay to ·the Ku brick.ian mastery.

The fact remai:ns, however, that the film sprang out of a book, and some of the controversy which has begun to attach to the film is controversy·iit which I, inevitably,· feel myself involved. In terms of.philosophy and even theology, the Kubrick "Orange" is a fruit from rpy tree.

I wrote "A Clockwork Orange" in 1961, which is a very remote yea_r, and I experience some difficulty in empathizing with that lon'g-gone writer who, concerned with making a living, wrote as many as five novels (this was one of them) in 14 months. The title is' the least difficult thing to explain. In 1945, back froin the armv, I heard an 80-yearold Cockney in a London pub say that somebody was "as queer as a clockwork orange." The "queer" did not mean homosexual; it meant mad. The phrase intrigued me with its unlikely fusion of demotic and surrealistic.

For nearly 20 years I wanted to use it as the title of something. During those 20 ye~rs I heard it several times more -in underground stations, in pubs, in television plays - but al\vays from aged Cocknevs, never from the youn~.

It was a traditional trope, and it asked to entitle a work which combined a concern with tradition and a bizarre technique. The opportunity to use it came when I conceived the notion of writing a novel about brainwashing.

Joyce's Stephen De d a 1 us (in "Ulysses") refers to the world as an "oblate orange"; man is a microcosm or little worid; he is a growth as organic as a fruit, capable of color, fragrance and sweetness; to meddle with him, condition him, is to turn him into a mechanical creation.

There had been some talk in the British press about the problems of growing criminality. The youth of the late 1950s were restless and naughty, dissatisfied with the postwar world, violent and destructive, and they-being more conspicuous than: mere old-time crooks and hoods-were what many people meant when they talked about growing criminality.

Looking back from a peak of violence, we can see that the British teddy-boys and mods and rockers were mere tyros in the craft of antisocial aggression; nevertheless, they were a portent. and the man in the street was right to be scared.

How to deal with them? Prison or reform school made them worse; why- not

AUTHOR BURGESS ••• violence as an act of catharsis,

save the taxpayer's money by subjecting them to ari easy c::ourse In conditioning some kind of aversio11: therapy which ~hould make them associate the act of violence with discomfort, nausea, or even intimations of mortality'/ Many heads nodded as this proposal (not, at the tiine, a governi;nental pro,posal but one merely put out by nrivate though inf'luential theoreticians).

Heads still nod at it. On the David Frost Show it was suggested to me that it might have been a good thing if Adolf Hitler had been forced to underJ?o aversion therapy. so that the very thought of a new Putsch or pogrom would make him sick up his cream cakes.

Hitler was-, unfortunately, a human being, and if we could have countenanced the conditioning of one human being we would have to accept it for all. Hitler was a great nui8ance, but history has known others disruptive enough to make the state's fingers itch -Christ, Luther, Bruno, even D. H. Lawrence. One has to be genu~nely philosophical about this, however much one has suffered. I don't know how much free will man really possesses (Wagner's Hans Sachs said "Wir rind ein wenig frei"_:_we are a little free), but I do know that what little he seems to have is too precious to encroach on, however good the intentions of the encroacher may be.

"A Clockwork Orange" was intended to be a sort of tract, even a sermoa, on the importance of the power of choice. My hero or antihero, Alex, is very vicious, perhaps even impossibly so, but his viciousness is not the product of genetic or social conditioning: It is his own thing, , embarked on in full awareness. Alex is evil, not merely misguided, and in a properly run society such evil as he enacts must be checked and puniEihed.

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