Cinematic Techniques In Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange

“The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can convey emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.” The written word and the moving image have always had their entwining roots deeply entrenched in similar narrative codes, both functioning at the level of implication, connotation and referentiality. But ever since the advent of cinema, they have been pitted against each other over formal and cultural peculiarities – hence engaging in a relationship deemed “overtly compatible, secretly hostile” (Bluestone 2). This sense of hostility springs forth from the misconstrued view of literature being the superior art form among the two, extending to the apparent artistic inferiority of cinematic adaptations, which seemingly “betrays” its source material. But the idea of cinema as a potent and dynamic art

Moreover, Kubrick’s reliance on unconventional camera angles and his cryptic employment of literary and mythic allusions have enriched the layered intricacies of A Clockwork Orange, hence preventing it’s evolution into a “work too didactic to be artistic”.1 Figs 1.7-1.19. A seventeen year old Alexander Delarge exercises violent delinquency along with his “droogs” by indulging in physical and sexual violence. Figs 1.10-1.12 Alex’s love for Beethoven is used against him when he is subjected to the Ludovico reform treatment, the failure of which leads to attempted suicide. In the end, Alex ironically muses, “I was cured after