If pride of place must go to A Clockwork Orange (Warner, West End, X) it is because this chilling and mesmeric adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel could well become one of the seminal movies of the seventies.

It certainly develops still further the stature and muscle of a director who, after Ò2001, A Space Odyssey,Ó could have been forgiven if he had found nowhere much to go. It trumps that ace just as Ò2001Ó trumped ÒDr Strangelove.Ó And it does so through sheer density of quality, and the imaginative application of first principles in the cinema.
By now, readers of this page will know what and who the film is about. We follow, in the all-too-recognisable limbo of a near-enough future, the rakeÕs progress of a twenty-year-old youth, addicted to ultraviolence and Ludwig Van (Beethoven), whose band of Droogs make the IRA look like sheep in wolvesÕ clothing. He is eventually imprisoned for his systematic rejection of society and there conditioned to be violently ill not only when confronted with his former blood-lust but also, as a side effect, with the music that has brought a corrupt semblance of meaning to his lifestyle.
Let out, he falls a helpless, vomiting prey to the very people he originally offended. The biter is bit, and almost to death, by a process that Kubrick has called Òan almost magical coincidence of retribution.Ó But he is saved by the hypocritical outcry of the popular press and once more translated, smirking delightedly, into a suckling predator.
ÒAlmost magicalÓ Ñ the words have a meaning which identify more than the coincidence of retribution that gives the film its fascinating plot-line. There is a surreal, not to say satirical, feel about it which does two important things. It forms a sort of distancing catheter through which the uncompromising precision of its violence is filtered. It also magnifies and clarifies what Kubrick, and of course, Burgess, are on about, which is the awfulness of a future bent on present madness.
Does the insistent character parody, BurgessÕs Cockney-Romany-Russian argot he called Nadsat, the almost balletic roughing up, occasionally go a stage further than intended? Perhaps, yet neither the film nor the book could possibly do without it. The Horror-show is both genuinely horrific and genuinely a show. In other words, the parable hits home no less strongly because it isnÕt wholly naturalistic, vide: ÒBut enough of words. Actions speak louder than. Action now. Observe all.Ó
No room now to go on about the fascinating parallels with KubrickÕs other films (the William Tell orgy, the ÒSinginÕ in the RainÓ thuggery could only have been accomplished by the man who made that unstoppable bomber trundle through the sky to the strains of Vera Lynn). No room either to analyse a technical symmetry of sight and sound (much aided by Walter CarlosÕ Beethoven arrangements and Ken AdamÕs sets) which even this fantastically professional director has not bettered.
But one must add a tribute to KubrickÕs certainty in handling the English scene and another to his cast, headed by Malcolm McDowell as the sinister Alex, for whom it is possible to feel, because of the playingÕs quality, if not a liking, at least a sneaking, shame-faced sympathy and identification. Patrick Magee, Michael Bates and Anthony Sharp have also never been better. It is not a film the memory of which you will exactly wish to cherish. You may even, like me, reject the glib and icy pessimism of its message. But you will, I can assure you, find it difficult to put out of mind.