A Clockwork Orange – The Sour Sweetness of Original Sin

“[A] human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange – meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. This is what the television news is about. Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive.

[…]

[M]y little squib of a book was found attractive to many because it was as odorous as a crateful of bad eggs with the miasma of original sin.”

           Anthony Burgess, 1986

      “A Clockwork Orange Resucked” – Introduction to the UK version of his novella

                                                            

Enjoy this 1972 interview with Anthony Burgess and Malcolm McDowell, on Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange (1963) and Stanley Kubrick's eponymous feature (1971).

This conversation interestingly interlaces Burgess' reflections on the genesis of the novel and his insights on language, man, and free will, with McDowell's opinions on the creative freedom of working with Kubrick, and on his (successful) attempt to turn an “evil force” into a “real personality,” that of Alex Delarge. 

 

As Burgess comments, “Alex is a man in that he is violent, as men are, he loves beauty and he loves language. These three things go all together.”

The beauty of classical music is surely one of the things Alex is most attracted to. 

The rhythm, the fluidity, the colour, the taste, and the evocative force of language are surely some of the things Burgess can most finely render on the page.

“Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three–wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk around my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.”

A bliss counterpointed by violent drives.

“After that I had lovely Mozart, the Jupiter, and there were new pictures of different litsos to be ground and splashed, and it was after this that I thought I would have just one last disc only before crossing the border, and I wanted something starry and strong and very firm, so it was J. S. Bach I had, the Brandenburg Concerto just for middle and lower strings. And, slooshying with different bliss than before, I viddied again this name on the paper I'd razrezzed that night, a long time ago it seemed, in that cottage called HOME. The name was about a clockwork orange. Listening to the J. S. Bach, I began to pony better what that meant now, and I thought, slooshying away to the brown gorgeousness of the starry German master, that I would like to have tolchecked them both harder and ripped them to ribbons on their own floor.”

Sara.

Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. London: Penguin, 1996. 

Maudites lunettes noires! – Agnes Varda's "Les fiancés du Pont Macdonald"

If you think about the French Nouvelle Vague, some of the things that may come to your mind are

Jean-Pierre Leaud's confused look at the end of Les quatrecents coups,

Jean Seberg's striped t-shirts in A bout de souffle,

Jeanne Moreau's fake moustache in Jules et Jim,

Jean-Paul Belmondo's blue face in Pierrot le fou.

Yet, Nouvelle Vague also means Jean-Luc Godard's black sunglasses.

  

Worried that the viewer could get bored towards the end of her feature Cléo de 5 a 7 (1961), film director Agnes Varda jotted down a short story.

“The heroes of this story are Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard. The truth behind this film, my wish 

to do it in this way, is that I had enough of Godard's dark sunglasses, very dark; one could never see 

his eyes. And I knew – I had seen – that he had beautiful eyes. So I made up a silly story.”

By the way, Cléo de 5 a 7 (1961) is not at all boring.

Pasolini interviews Ungaretti on Homosexuality

Comizi d'amore - Love Meetings (1965)

While looking for the right set for his film Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St Matthew, 1964), Pier Paolo Pasolini embarks on a journey throughout Italy and, driven by restless curiosity and a deep passion, he gives life to Comizi d'amore (Love Meetings).

Equipped only with his microphone, Pasolini explores the most diverse social environments, traveling the Peninsula from north to south, and asking for Italians' opinions about sexuality, love, eroticism: farmers, workers, students, housewives, actors, writers, nobody is spared. He thereby provides us with a photography of the Country at the beginning of the 1960s (it was 1963, the film-documentary will be released in 1965).

On the weakest side: the poetry of Jean Vigo

There, where fairy tales end, begins the story of Jean and Juliette. On leaving the church, the newly-wed couple embarks for their honeymoon on board the motor barge Atalante. Together with Jean, captain of the boat, and Juliette, there are Pére Jules, an old and eccentric mariner covered with tattoos and with a passion for cats, and a young hand. It´s the opening scene of the only feature film realised by Jean Vigo, L´Atalante (1935).

"He focused his lens only on the real and transformed it into fairy tales", claimed Truffaut about the young director, who died at 29, precisely during the shooting of that which would have become one of the great cinema masterpieces, and not only in France.

What strikes the most is undoubtedly the sincerity and simplicity of this “small subject”, which tells about the passion of a young couple and about the difficulties of the first moments of a life to be spent together.

Happiness and enthusiasm are soon replaced by the difficulties Julliette encounters in adapting to the life on board the barge. After a quarrel with Jean, and attracted by the much more stimulating and interesting allure of the city, the young woman leaves the Atalante.

Touching and at the same time intensely sensual, is the scene in which Jean – in his bed on board his boat – and Juliette – in a hotel room several kilometers away – realise the sentiment and feeling that bind them together, of which the sudden absence has deprived them of.

Vigo´s narration combines two of the major cinematic tendencies of the first decades of the 20^th century, namely realism and aestheticism, thereby contributing to the popularity of what would be known as poetic realism.

Jean lived a troubled childhood, marked by the absence of his parents, Miguel Almereyda* and Emily Clero, sixth of five brothers born from a former relationship and all dead at a very young age, educated in a boarding school, ill since he was a kid. The only inheritance he was left with had been his paternal grandfather´s motto “I protect the weakest!” that Jean didn´t hesitate to put into practice in his short but brilliant career**.

Before L´Atalante he had realised the two short films À propos de Nice (1930) and Zéro de conduite (1933), both characterised by his peculiar sperimentalism, which would be fully represented precisely in L´Atalante.

If you can keep your eyes open under water, you will be able to see your beloved one…

Jean dives in the canal, crazy for love, hoping to meet his Juliette. It´s the well-known underwater scene, in which he sees the young woman, laughing, in her bride dress.

Eventually Juliette will be found by Pére Jules and, once back on board, will finally hug her beloved Jean. Now this story can end, just as in fairy tales.

Sara

* His real name was Miguel Bonaventura de Vigo, but he changed it in Almereyda because it sounded Spanish, and therefore remembered his andorran origins, and because it contained the letters of the phrase y a la merde! 

**Truffaut François, The Films in my Life, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1978 (original title: Les films dans ma vie, 1975); pp. 24, 25, 26.

Dalla parte dei più deboli: la poesia di Jean Vigo

Là dove tutte le favole si concludono, inizia la storia di Jean e Juliette. I novelli sposi, all'uscita dalla chiesa, si imbarcano per una luna di miele a bordo della chiatta a motore Atalante. Assieme a Jean, comandante del battello, e Juliette, ci sono a bordo Pére Jules, un vecchio ed eccentrico marinaio ricoperto di tatuaggi e con la passione per i gatti, ed un giovane mozzo.

Si tratta della scena d'apertura dell'unico lungometraggio realizzato da Jean Vigo, L'Atalante (1935).

"Focalizzò la sua lente sulla realtà e la trasformò in fiaba", ebbe a dire Truffaut riguardo il giovane regista, morto a soli 29 anni proprio durante le riprese di quello che diventerà uno dei grandi capolavori del cinema, non solo francese.

Quel che colpisce è senza dubbio la sincerità e la semplicità di questa "piccola storia", che racconta della passione di una giovane coppia e delle difficoltà dei primi momenti di una vita assieme.

La felicità e l'entusiasmo per l'inizio del nuovo viaggio vengono ben presto sostituiti dalla difficoltà per Juliette di adattarsi alla vita a bordo della chiatta; in seguito ad un litigio, la giovane abbandona l'Atalante, attratta dalla ben più stimolante ed interessante aura della città.

Commovente ed allo stesso tempo intensamente sensuale, 

è la sequenza in cui Jean, nel suo letto a bordo della chiatta, 

e Juliette in una camera d'albergo, a chilometri di distanza,

si rendono conto del sentimento e della passione che li lega

e di cui l'improvvisa assenza li ha privati.

Nella sua narrazione Vigo unisce le due maggiori tendenze del cinema dei primi decenni del XX secolo, realista ed estetica, contribuendo in maniera determinante all'affermarsi del realismo poetico.

Figlio degli anarchici militanti Miguel Almereyda¹ ed Emily Clero, sesto di cinque fratelli nati da una precedente unione e tutti deceduti molto giovani, Jean visse un'infanzia complicata segnata dall'assenza dei genitori, cresciuto in un collegio, malato fin da piccolo. Unica eredità fu il motto del nonno paterno “Io proteggo i più deboli!”, che Jean mise in pratica nella sua, tanto corta quanto brillante, carriera cinematografica².

Il lungometraggio L'Atalante venne preceduto dai cortometraggi À propos de Nice (1930) e Zéro de conduite (1933), entrambi caratterizzati dallo sperimentalismo proprio del regista, che però trova piena realizzazione, appunto, ne L'Atalante.

Chi riesce a tenere gli occhi aperti sott'acqua riuscirà a vedere la persona amata

 Jean si tuffa, disperato d'amore, pur di rivedere la sua Juliette. E' la celeberrima scena girata sott'acqua, nella quale la giovane donna appare agli occhi dell'amato, ridendo, in abito da sposa.

Sarà Pére Jules a ritrovare Juliette che, una volta ritornata a bordo della chiatta, potrà finalmente riabbracciare il suo Jean. 

Ora la storia può concludersi come tutte le favole.

Sara

1 Pseudonimo di Miguel Bonaventure de Vigo, che si scelse questo cognome perché sembrava molto spagnolo, ricordando così le sue radici andorrane, ma anche perché conteneva tutte le lettere della frase: y a la merde!

2 Truffaut François, The Films in my Life, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1978 (titolo originale: Les films dans ma vie, 1975) pp. 24, 25, 26 -  traduzione italiana mia.