Listening to Stanley Kubrick (22 page)

The scenario of the opera should be noted:
La gazza ladra
may be classified as “rescue opera” because the heroine, Ninetta, is saved from a horrible fate—execution—at the very last minute.
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In Billyboy’s scenario there is also a rescue; Alex’s arrival saves a woman from a savage gang rape. In Rossini’s opera, the cause of all trouble and misunderstandings is a magpie that steals things, hiding them in her nest. In Billyboy’s stage drama, Alex is the thief as he steals the starring role away from Billyboy and takes it for himself. The idea of Alex as thieving magpie is evident in his treatment of music; not only does Alex steal Billyboy’s thunder, he robs the works of great composers and uses the music to enhance his dastardly thoughts and actions.
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The combination of music and motion—a choreographed and stylized fight scene—has caused more than a few people to discuss the scenes accompanied by the Rossini overture in terms of choreography. Kubrick takes this street scrap and turns it into something graceful, perhaps in a way distancing the audience from the violence.
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On the other hand, the music, because of its familiarity and liveliness, may help the audience feel the excitement Alex feels during the fight. Perhaps it is not meant to distance but rather to bring us closer to the character and the scene. The overture accompanies the entire fight scene and the scene that follows in which Alex and droogs travel through the night in a stolen car, forcing other cars off the road and searching for a little fun. Rossini’s music stays with the gang until they reach a place with a sign in front that says HOME. The overture fades away and is replaced by the doorbell that plays the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The “Fate Knocking at the Door” motif here is quite apt as the doorbell signals the arrival of Alex and his droogs.

Rossini’s overture reappears after the gang regroups the following day, and Pete, Georgie, and Dim question Alex’s authority. Alex smoothes things over until the group walks down to the waterfront. As the scene unfolds in slow motion—underscoring its importance to Alex—the voiceover explains the main character’s thought process. Thinking, he reasons, is actually for stupid people, while the smart ones are inspired. Taking his inspiration from some unnamed music he can hear through an open window, Alex lashes out at his friends. In the novel, Burgess allows Alex to specify that it is Beethoven’s Violin Concerto that encouraged him so.
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Rossini’s overture plays through the slow-motion fight and through the two scenes that follow: one in which the droogs agree to let Alex remain their leader, and the second in which they go to the house of the “cat lady” (so called because there are a number of cats in her residence). When Alex enters the house, he attempts to charm the woman at first, but as she demands he leave, he reacts to what he perceives as her rudeness. Next to the doorway in which he stands is a rather large ceramic phallus on a table. The woman admonishes him not to touch this “very important work of art.” In their conflict, she grabs a small metal bust of Beethoven, swinging it wildly, while Alex holds the phallic sculpture in front of him. The music gets louder, and they circle each other, seemingly waltzing to the accompanying music as they taunt each other with their weapons. The woman manages to hit Alex in the head, which allows her a brief advantage. Ultimately, however, the blow to the head just causes Alex to become angry; he seemed to be enjoying the “dance” with the woman. Alex trips the woman and hits her with the sculpture. The climax of the music enhances the fatal blow,
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as do the still pictures of the paintings (all paintings were done by Kubrick’s wife Christiane) Kubrick cut together. Kubrick does not show the sculpture making contact with the woman’s face, nor does he show any gore or blood. In this way, we are spared from the view, like Quilty’s death behind the painting in
Lolita
.

In the earlier scene in the derelict casino, Alex heard sirens in the distance and he whistled for his gang’s attention. The music quieted down as well, as if obeying his command. In this scene with the cat lady, once again, the sirens wail outside, and Alex backs away from the body of the woman. He stumbles outside to warn his friends and get away. But there is one more obstacle in his path. The droogs, who have decided to relieve Alex of his leadership, contrive a way to keep Alex at the scene just long enough to be nabbed by the police. Dim stands waiting outside of the woman’s house brandishing a glass bottle of milk behind his back. Once again, the important moment is rendered in slow motion. As Dim swings his arm around and the bottle makes contact with Alex’s face, the splash of white takes place as if in a dream. The music plays on, Alex screaming that he cannot see. The Rossini overture meshes with the sound of sirens until all sound abruptly ends and the following scene begins. In contrast to the darkness of the night and the loudness of the score, the next scene takes place in a brightly lit and very quiet police station.

Perhaps Kubrick chose the overture simply because of its lively rhythms, because it is a playful template against which the movements of the characters can be placed. There is no indication that Kubrick was aware of the story of the opera or even that he was particularly concerned about whether he was using the overture rather than an aria or a chorus (although works with voices must be used carefully in film so as not to clash with dialogue). As in
2001
, Kubrick was concerned with finding pieces that had discrete sections, organic resting points, and the energy appropriate for the scene. Rossini’s overture provided all three.

The version of the overture that appears in the film is a traditional orchestral performance, although Kubrick and Wendy Carlos had hoped to present a Moog version of the overture. There wasn’t time to complete it, however, and the Moog version does not appear in either the film or on the original soundtrack album. However, a second soundtrack offering was released in 1972 called
[Wendy]
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Carlos’ A Clockwork Orange
, which features her Moog version of the piece.

Rossini: Overture to
Guillaume Tell

Appearances:

0:28:10–0:29:25 Alex has a consensual ménage à trois with two girls he meets in the record shop. This is a sped-up Moog version of the Allegro Vivace finale of the overture.

0:47:27–0:48:20 A view of Alex’s prison is shown from above. Alex’s voiceover explains that this is the sad part of the story (traditional version of the Andante section).

1:32:03–1:37:10 Alex has left the Ludovico center, to return home, but finds that his parents don’t want him anymore; he walks through the streets (Andante section).

Another overture by Rossini appears in the film, the overture to
Guillaume Tell
, which was composed in the late 1820s. Two parts of the piece appear. The first excerpt that appears in the film is the Allegro Vivace finale. It appears in a version performed by Wendy Carlos on the Moog synthesizer. In her realization, both the timbre of the piece and the tempo are altered. The overture to
Guillaume Tell
accompanies what, in the film, is the only consensual sexual encounter. Alex meets two young women at the record shop and picks them up to the tune of the march of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He lures them to his home with the promise that he will play their records on his high-quality sound system. The ménage à trois, accompanied by a very fast rendering of the overture to
Guillaume Tell
, is meant to be a moment of levity. The music brings to mind references to the Lone Ranger and the feeling that things are comically rushed. The end of the excerpt slows down to normal speed as Alex meets his friends for the evening.

In the novel, Alex meets Marty and Sonietta in the record shop, two young girls Alex describes as being around ten. He takes them out for lunch and then brings them home. He does indeed play their pop records, as promised, and while he does so, gives them alcohol to drink. When their music is finished, he injects some drugs and puts on Beethoven’s Ninth. He rapes Marty and Sonietta while the last movement of the symphony plays (he mentions that he plays it twice through), and afterward the girls are upset but leave him to sleep. In the book, this encounter is one that truly distances the reader from Alex. In the film, to show the incident as written (although Alex is fifteen in the book) would have been devastating to any sense of identification the audience has with Alex. Here, Kubrick takes the incident and changes it to something funny, something that makes us think that Alex is simply a rogue, a cad, but not an evil one.

The other part of Rossini’s overture to
Guillaume Tell
is the sad, soulful andante opening, and this excerpt accompanies moments of pathos or the times in which Alex despairs. The first moment of despair is an overhead shot of the prison. Alex opines that we have reached the sad and tragic part of the narrative. Kubrick shows three separate shots of the state jail, from different angles while Alex recalls the trial and the harsh words spoken against him. The music begins to fade so that the transition from Alex (the individual) to prisoner 655321 is unaccompanied by any music.

This section of the overture to
Guillaume Tell
returns when Alex, who has been released from the Ludovico center, is told by his parents that they do not want him to come home. Alex tries to punch the lodger Joe, who is now occupying his old room, but is too sickened from the treatment to do anything. The music begins as his father explains that all of his belongings were taken for victim compensation and that his pet snake “met with like an accident.” The music gains more prominence in the scene as Alex’s father explains that Joe has already paid next month’s rent and will not leave. Alex walks along the waterfront, looking at the water and listening to the birds sing. An old man asks for money and recognizes Alex as one of the young men who assaulted him earlier in the narrative. Seeing that Alex is weak and defenseless, the man gets his revenge, and the music stops.

Rimsky-Korsakov:
Scheherazade

Appearance:

0:56:00–0:57:30 Accompanies Alex’s fantasies while in prison

While Alex is incarcerated, he reads the Bible and fantasizes about the violence he finds there. Alex, sitting in the prison library with a large Bible open in front of him, imagines himself as a Roman soldier savagely whipping Jesus as he wearily carries his cross to Calvary. The music on the score is an excerpt from Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite
Scheherazade
, composed in 1888. The film cuts back to Alex at a desk in the prison as he dreamily closes his eyes. He then imagines slitting the throat of an enemy in battle while he explains his preference for the sex and violence of the Old Testament over the excessive talking of the New Testament. Alex imagines that he is reclining on a bed of cushions surrounded by three topless women, one looking off into the distance, one feeding him large purple grapes, and the other fanning him with a palm frond. The sequence is accompanied by the solo violin of
Scheherazade
, and here the music is ostensibly supplied by Alex’s imagination. The exoticism of the music is a fitting accompaniment to the images of Alex lying between two women in exotic costumes while being fanned by a third. All the women are topless and each wears jeweled head decorations and long strings of beads around her neck. Alex and the women lie under a red canopy and on top of many red pillows. The music is unlike anything we have heard up to this point, and its uniqueness speaks to Alex’s new exotic and biblical fantasies.

“Singin’ in the Rain”

Appearances:

0:11:15–0:13:16 Alex sings this song as he and his friends attack and sexually assault a woman, forcing her husband to watch

1:47:15–1:49:38 Alex sings it to himself as he sits in the bathtub at F. Alexander’s house

2:13:56–2:16:30 Gene Kelly’s version over the end credits

In the novel
A Clockwork Orange
, the attack on F. Alexander and his wife takes place without music. Alex does not provide any either by playing a recording or by singing. Instead, the only sounds are the screams of the two victims. Kubrick wanted some musical accompaniment to the attack in the film. He asked Malcolm McDowell if he knew any songs off-hand and “Singin’ in the Rain” was the song he mentioned. The song McDowell used could have just as easily been “76 Trombones” from the
Music Man
or “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” from
Oklahoma!
Each one would have brought extra-diegetic meaning to the film as “Singin’ in the Rain,” does. One cannot help but think of Gene Kelly’s dance number in the eponymous Stanley Donnen classic, especially because Alex dances a bit during the attack. Perhaps Kubrick meant to offer the scene as a parody of musical numbers, just as the fights choreographed to music can be read as a parody of dance. The cries of the couple as well as Dim’s off-key backup singing are Alex’s only accompaniment. The song is incongruent (although Alex does seem “ready for love”) and that is the point of it. If Alex were singing a song about raping and beating, his actions would at least match his words, yet the joy of the song is a sharp contrast to the humiliation and horror of the Alexanders. It also underscores how casual violence can be to Alex. In that respect, it is a far more chilling accompaniment than silence.

The song appears two more times in the film. After Alex has been subjected to the Ludovico treatment and ends up back at F. Alexander’s house, he sits in a bath and quietly sings the song. F. Alexander, intrigued by the sound, rolls over to the bathroom door in his wheelchair to hear Alex better. The song plunges him back into the horror of the night he and his wife were attacked. Whether this song could actually be sung by Alex after the Ludovico treatment is doubtful. Even if, as he states for the reporter, he is sickened only by the Ninth Symphony, “Singin’ in the Rain” would remind him of violence as well, unless he were singing completely mindlessly. If the song did not cause the sickness, surely the associations he had with it would. One might think of Alex’s probable response as being an analogue to that of F. Alexander. Alex too would remember the events of that night and, instead of taking pleasure in those memories, he would be sickened by them. As a dramatic device, however, Kubrick’s use of the song as F. Alexander’s revelation is very effective.