On August 10, in Screen in Times2, we asked you to vote for the most controversial film yet made. Three films came close: The Birth of a Nation, I Spit on Your Grave and The Passion of the Christ. But the clear winner was Kubrick’s chilling vision of a violent dystopia, based on the novel by Anthony Burgess.
For 27 years there was no easy way for British film fans to see it. There were sneaky screenings in the Scala cinema in London (it was listed in Time Out as a “fruity mechanical treat”; the cinema was eventually sued and pretty much bankrupt); you could take a trip to a fleapit cinema in Paris or Amsterdam; illegal bootleg copies circulated on dodgy market stalls. Otherwise, it remained off limits until Kubrick’s death in 1999.
The film was initially released during a national debate about the effects of violence on the screen, but it was the director himself who withdrew it after reports of crimes copying the gang of “droogs” and their scenes of rape, robbery and violence. Kubrick’s widow recently revealed that his decision actually came after he received death threats.
Naturally, the film’s absence only swelled its cult reputation, to the point that it has come to obscure the original point of contention: does Kubrick’s bleak depiction of ultraviolence flaunt what it purports to condemn?