A Clockwork Orange

Unseen between 1974 (when Stanley Kubrick himself quietly withdrew it) and 2000 (after his death), it is little wonder that an inflated degree of mythology surrounds this notorious futuristic drama. Dramatised from the 1962 Anthony Burgess novella about anarchic yobs (“droogs”) in a dystopian future, it was shocking then and it's shocking today, particularly the scenes of rape and sadistic “ultraviolence” in the first half. Burgess and Kubrick may have been making intellectual points about the state and free will — Alex (Malcolm McDowell) is brainwashed into submission in the film's more ponderous second half — but the film doesn't quite live up to the masterpiece status that unattainability has bestowed on it. Fascinating and prescient, yes, and its moral ambiguity is brave, but it's really only essential viewing for cineastes and film students.

Kubrick's fantastic meditation on a violent future has seemed more prescient with every passing year. In extraordinary images of clown-like delinquents, he orchestrates to electronic music mindless street violence, which leads to mindful state violence a