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While doing press for The Shining in 1980, Kubrick addressed the problem with using new
creations in production design, costumes, music, and other aspects of filmmaking. He
said, "Do you try to imagine something – or, do you take a real hotel? It’s like the
way costumes used to be done in historical movies, before Zeffirelli and Visconti…
And if you made a Costume Picture, you’d get a Costume Designer – and from their
vast store of culture they would draw costumes for you. But Visconti and Zeffirelli suddenly
made it artistically acceptable to copy paintings… Well I think, the same thing really is true
in many instances with sets – …if the real things are there…?” (StoryAlity).
Five or so years earlier, Kubrick went all around Ireland, England, and West Germany
opting to shoot in real historical locations instead of creating sets for Barry Lyndon
(Lyndon Wiki). If you’ve seen my video on the cinematography Barry Lyndon, you’ll
know this sometimes meant waiting for tour groups to by in between takes.
Around five years earlier than that, Kubrick was doing pre-production on A Clockwork Orange—a
sci-fi movie taking place in the not-too-distant-future, but there was a problem. Kubrick’s previous
2001: A Space Odyssey had gone way over budget and way behind schedule and opened to mixed
reviews. 2001 actually lost $800,000 on its initial run and only turned a profit after
a re-release in 1971—the same year A Clockwork Orange hit theaters.
Kubrick had to prove to studios that he could do a film on a relatively low budget. But
how do you make make a low-budget futuristic sci-fi movie on-location without building
a bunch of crazy sets?
Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about on this episode of making film...
A Clockwork Orange was shot on location in England “during the winter of 1970-71" (LoBrutto). Kubrick’s
home in Abbot’s Mead served as production headquarters because it had [quote] “editing
rooms and a music facility which had a carefully catalogued record collection” with “screening
facilities in his living room, and a garage that served as his office” (LoBrutto).
Kubrick had told line-producer Bernie Williams, "I want to make the movie within an hour and
a half’s travel time of my house, so figure out how far I can reach in that time in the
rush hour” (LoBrutto).
Williams was first asked to meet Kubrick in 1968 shortly after 2001: A Space Odyssey had
opened and he decided to see the movie before meeting with Kubrick. Williams said, "I went
to see the film the night before and came out with my head spinning, thinking, Oh my
god, I’m gonna see the man who made this movie in the morning and I don’t understand
the end. I went to his house [in Borehamwood] and he was surrounded by cats and dogs...
I was making notes of things he was telling me. He asked me why and I said, 'I can’t
remember everything.' He liked that because he always carries notebooks himself" (Grundy 110).
Kubrick wanted the locations in the film to look “a bit futuristic,” so they started
by looking in old "British architectural magazines” for interesting-looking buildings to scout
(Michel Ciment). Kubrick said, "I purchased ten back issues of three different architectural
magazines and spent two solid weeks with my art director John Barry… tearing out pages” (Grundy 110).
Over those two weeks, Kubrick and production designer John Barry making a “display file”
of potential locations, which [quote] "allowed them to cross-reference the
material in limitless ways” (LoBrutto).
There is actually a book titled New British Architecture by Robert Maxwell that features
several of the locations used in A Clockwork Orange, though it was published shortly after
the film’s release.
Bernie Williams said, “We sent an army of production assistants to go out and shoot
stills and and do homework on locations. We bought 20 VW mini-vans and made them into
mobile offices and prop trucks, so we could get around quicker. Looking back, that might
not have been so smart, ‘cos we were working 16 hours a day and kept falling asleep on
the job” (Grundy 110).
So let’s take a look at some of the locations they found…
Tell us all about it then!
The first is the theater where Alex and his droogs have a rumble with Billyboy and his gang.
Now, this isn’t a futuristic location, but the story behind it is pretty interesting.
The theater was an old casino on Tagg's Island (LoBrutto). The Tagg family were successful
in the boating industry, but around the turn of the century, the family ran out of money (Richmond).
Enter Fred Karno in 1912 who had made his fortune in theater promotion and
financing (Richmond). Karno bought the island and hotel and worked with an architect to
demolish the old hotel and replace it with a luxury hotel, which he named The Karsino (Richmond).
Here is a very small photo of The Karsino when it was up and running in 1912.
Karno employed several acts including a young Charlie Chaplin who performed on this very
stage (Richmond). The way Kubrick begins with the pleasant-looking mural only to widen
to an attempted rape on a dilapidated stage shows just how irreverent this movie will
be. Also, notice the movements of the actors during the attempted rape, which Kubrick said
[quote] “has the overtones of a ballet” (LoBrutto).
Next is Alex’s parents' apartment.
Alex!
Author of The Complete Kubrick, David Hughes said, “[Kubrick] was imagining the future
on a very small scale, so rather than build some kind of a futuristic apartment block,
the idea was to use the worst possible apartment block that you could find in the 1960s in
London, and at that stage, there was a lot of them being thrown up" (Making).
Where I lived, was with my dada and mum in municipal flat block 18A Linear North.
They decided to use the “newly-built” area of Thamesmead in London, characterized
by its [quote] "vast, dismal, windswept collection of tower blocks connected by intimidating
walkways” (Movie-Locations). McDowell said it was [quote] "a sort of social experiment,
one of these places, sort of belabored government-built, and of course, within ten years it was a slum” (Commentary).
This was also the same area that had the Flat Block Marina called Binsey
Walk where Alex attacks his droogs.
The complex was originally meant to [quote] "house 60,000 people and incorporate homes,
schools, factories, shops and more” (Modernism).
Have a nice day at the factory.
It was meant to be built in two phases with the first being completed around the time
of production (Modernism). However, only 40,000 people moved in and because of an oil crisis
and “backlash" against these kinds of projects, the second phase was never completed (Modernism).
The interiors were done in a real apartment about fifteen or seventeen stories up in a
high rise very close to Kubrick’s house in Borehamwood (Commentary). There was a couple
living in the apartment who were moved out during filming and the production spent £5,000
pounds decorating the apartment to look strange and futuristic (Movie-Locations). After shooting,
Kubrick moved the couple out again to [quote] “re-shoot a couple of close-ups” (Movie-Locations).
The record store was actually the basement of the Chelsea drugstore on King’s Road (Alison Castle).
The exterior was pretty cool looking, but they didn’t use it in the movie. The
drugstore was designed by Garnett, Cloughley & Blakemore who also designed the restaurant
at the top of the Post Office Tower or BT Tower (Modernism).
And the Chelsea Drugstore was also name-checked in the Rolling Stones’ song “You Can’t
Always Get What You Want” (John Coulthart).
I went… to the Chelsea Drugstore—
It closed in the 70s and is now a McDonalds (Movie-Locations). A lot of people point out that you can see
the soundtrack to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in the record store scene, which by
the way, isn’t the soundtrack, but rather a collection of movie theme music. But I remember
reading, and I can’t for the life of me find the source, that the record was actually
found at the location.
An artist and designer named John Coulthart made a great post cataloguing every record
and magazine he could find in the scene. You can find the link in the description. One
thing he noticed is that the official soundtrack actually does make an appearance... here (John Coulthart).
He also revealed that the record to the left has the
Daisy Bell song that HAL sings in the film (John Coulthart).
I’m half crazy all for the love of you.
As I mentioned in the previous video, these shots were done using a wide-angle Angenieux
9.8mm lens that had an f-stop of .95 (LoBrutto). This and several other lenses were cutting-edge
and perfect for location shooting because they let in so much more light than the standard
f2.0 lenses and allowed Kubrick to shoot [quote] “with natural light until late in the afternoon” (LoBrutto).
Before we move on, I want to take a moment to mention this episode’s bonus content.
For this episode, I made a bonus video-trivia-game of ten questions about Kubrick and A Clockwork
Orange. Here’s a preview:
In A Clockwork Orange, the droogs’ outfits are based on a sporting uniform that Malcolm
McDowell had in his car, however, the jock-strap usually worn under the pants was instead worn
on top of the pants as a giant codpiece. What sport does this uniform come from?
It’s just a dollar and really helps out the channel! You can find a link in the description
and at the end of the video. Now back to the show...
The futuristic-looking Ludovico Medical Clinic was filmed at Brunel University in West London (Alison Castle).
The building was built between 1965 and 1967, so not too long before the
production (Historic England). It looks like something you’d find on the “evil buildings’
sub-Reddit. That’s because the building was done in a style called Brutalism that
is characterized as looking large and blocky and made of “heavy looking materials”
like concrete, giving the buildings a look that many describe as “monolithic” (Designing Buildings).
What’s really cool is that, in 2011, they
screened A Clockwork Orange in the same room that Alex received the Ludovico Treatment (MyLondon).
The university was also used for the "police interrogation room,” Alex’s hospital room,
and the lobby to his parent’s apartment building, which were filmed in "Tower D and
the John Crank building" (Modernism).
Perhaps the most important location in the film is Mr. Alexander’s house. The exterior
of the house was filmed at a place called New House in Shipton-Under Whychwood (Modernism).
It was designed and built in 1964 for a London barrister named Milton Grundy (Modernism).
The house is made up of “five linked pavilions,” but we mainly see the house’s
"Japanese gravel garden” (Modernism).
The interiors were filmed in a house called Skybreak House in Radlett, which was designed
by Team 4 for an entrepreneur named Tony Jaffe (Modernism).
One source claims that Kubrick originally wanted to shoot the interiors of this house,
but the owner, a man who brought one-hour photo processing to the masses, denied Kubrick
permission to shoot there (Modernism, Shenton Wiki).
A Clockwork Orange was shot entirely on location except for four sets. These were [quote]:
"the Korova Milk Bar, the Prison Check-in, the Writer’s Bathroom, and the Entrance
Hall to his house” (Michel Ciment). That said, none of these sets were built on a soundstage,
instead, the production rented a small factory warehouse “near the old MGM studios” where
they built all the sets except for the Entrance Hall, which was built “in a tent in the
back garden” of the Skybreak House they filmed the interiors in (Ciment, Castle).
Another source says that it was the bathroom that was made in the tent (Alison Castle).
The Korova Milk Bar is perhaps the most iconic location in the film. It's the place where
the droogs and other strange inhabitants of the Clockwork Orange universe drown their
sorrows or gain an edge for “ultra-violence” by drinking a Moloko Plus—a fictional cocktail
consisting of milk mixed with “vellocet,”an amphetamine like Adderall, “synthemesc,”
a synthetic mescaline, or “drencrom” short for adrenochrome (Moloko Wiki).
Woah, wait a second. Isn’t adrenocrome that insane adrenaline drug from Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas?
What is this shit?
That stuff… makes pure mescaline seem like… ginger beer, man.
Yeesh. No wonder Alex is so insane.
The most striking aspect of the Korova Milk Bar is the nude female mannequins that dispense
the Moloko Plus and stand-in for much of the furniture.
Kubrick said, "I had also seen an exhibition of sculpture which displayed female figures
as furniture. From this came the idea for the fiberglass nude figures which were used
as tables in the milk bar. To get the poses right for the sculptress who modeled the figures,
John Barry photographed a nude model in as many positions as he could imagine would make
a table. There are fewer positions than you might think” (Grundy 110).
The sculptures Kubrick saw at the exhibition were the work of British Pop Artist Allen
Jones in 1970, so very close to the time of A Clockwork Orange’s production. Jones hadn’t
worked in sculpture before, so oversaw a sculptor who made the figures out of fiberglass based
on Jones' drawings (Hatstand Wiki). The piece was titled Hatstand, Table, and Chair depicting
women in "corsets, gloves, and leather boots” positioned to behave as furniture (Hatstand Wiki).
Looking back on the sculptures, Jones said, "I was living in Chelsea and I had an interest
in the female figure and the sexual charge that comes from it. Every Saturday on the
King's Road you went out and skirts were shorter, the body was being displayed in some new way.
And you knew that the following week somebody would up the ante... I was reflecting on and
commenting on exactly the same situation that was the source of the feminist movement. It
was unfortunate for me that I produced the perfect image for them to show how women were
being objectified” (Hatstand Wiki).
Yeah, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the sculptures during this exhibition.
Kubrick contacted Jones to do something similar for A Clockwork Orange, but Jones turned him
down because Kubrick didn’t offer any payment, but Jones agreed to give Kubrick permission
to make something based on his work (Hatstand Wiki).
The figures were made for the film by sculptor Liz Moore who also made the Star Child for
2001: A Space Odyssey (LoBrutto).
A Clockwork Orange takes place in a future where sexual imagery is everywhere. On the
subject, Kubrick said, "The erotic decor in the film suggests a slightly futuristic period
for the story. The assumption being that erotic art will eventually become popular art, and
just as you now buy African wildlife paintings in Woolworth’s, you may one day buy erotica” (Michel Ciment).
In Alex’s room, you can see dancing ceramic Christs called "Christ Unlimited", which were
made by “two Dutch sculptors, Herman and Cornelius Makkink” who also made… this…
strange thing…. called "Rocking Machine" (Castle, Makkink Wiki).
Leave that alone! Don’t touch it! It’s a very important work of art!
For several of the locations, but most notably at the health farm, Kubrick gathered various
erotic paintings from “various artists,” but in Mr. Alexander’s house, you can see
a giant painting titled “Seedboxes” by his wife Christiane (LoBrutto). You can see
several of her paintings in Eyes Wide Shut.
This one was actually painted by Kubrick’s daughter Katharina. This is her on the set
of Barry Lyndon next to her younger sister Vivian. The painting is of his cat Polly and
was a gift for his 60th birthday.
As you usually do when shooting on-location, the shooting schedule was built around specific
locations. Because the structure of A Clockwork Orange is sort of a U-shape where plot points
happen before the Ludovico treatment and we return to the same plot points after the Ludovico
treatment, they simply shot everything at each location all at once. This meant that
Malcolm McDowell was constantly going back and forth between playing pre-treatment Alex
and post-treatment Alex.
Just to let you know a little of what the schedule was like—the very first scene they
shot was Alex having breakfast with Dr. Branom. It’s kind of a strange scene to start with
because Malcolm McDowell had to portray Alex after several major things have impacted the
character and without first exploring Alex’s normal baseline life.
McDowell: “I mean, the first day was terrifying—absolutely nightmarish! We shot a scene in the Ludovico
hospital where I’m having breakfast and I hadn’t really got a clue what I was doing,
really. I was basically saying the lines and just hoping that it was right. And, when we
saw the rushes the next evening, Stanley said, ’That’s right. We’ve got it. That’s
it.’ And on the way home, I remember I thought to myself, ‘well, what was it? I can’t
remember quite what I did do.'
The scenes that took place at the Korova Milk Bar were shot halfway through production.
The iconic opening shot of the film happened after many of the other scenes were already
"in the can” (MacAndrew). If you’ve seen my series on 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’ll
know that, during that production, Kubrick had the luxury of deciding which set to film
on each day because they were more-or-less all ready for him at the same time.
It was back to basics for Kubrick—his earliest movies were low-budget, but it had been a
while since Kubrick wasn’t given the moon and the stars, so to speak. Kubrick decided
to simplify the crew first—opting for a skeleton crew that was able to get around
in a pinch (Alison Castle). Shooting on-location also means that you can’t remove a wall
to get a better angle or to fit dolly tracks. Some of the tracking shots in tight areas—like
the record store and the prison—were done using a regular old wheelchair, which brings
to mind the gorilla filmmaking techniques employed by the greats of the French New Wave (Alison Castle).
It’s worth noting that this practice would replaced by the use of a steadicam on
his later films.
One thing Kubrick was really proud of was that he didn’t use any post-synchronous
sound on A Clockwork Orange. This means that every line of dialogue you hear—outside
of the narration—was recorded on-location (Strick, Houston). This can be very difficult, because
if you shoot in a location with a lot of noise and wind, it tends to ruin the recording of
dialogue and you have to re-record the lines in a studio space and lay them over the film.
Forever a gear-head, Kubrick was not afraid to mix the old technology with the new.
He said, "I'm quite pleased about this because every scene was shot on location; even the
so-called sets that we built which were, in fact, built in a factory about 40 feet off
the noisy High Street in Borehamwood, a few hundred yards from the old M-G-M Studio. Despite
this, we were able to get quite acceptably clean soundtracks. With the modem equipment
that's available today in the form of microphones, radio transmitters and so forth, it should
be possible to get a usable soundtrack almost anywhere. In the scene where the tramp recognises
Alex who is standing near the Thames, next to the Albert Bridge, there was so much traffic
noise on the location that you had to shout in order to be heard, but we were able to
get such a quiet soundtrack that it was necessary to add street noise in the final mix to make
it realistic. We used a microphone the size of a paperclip, and it was secured with black
tape on the tramp's scarf. In several shots you can see the microphone, but you don't
know what you're looking at" (Strick, Houston).
You can just barely see the microphone right here:
Kubrick was also an early user of a [quote] "new Dolby system in post-production to reduce
or eliminate unwanted sounds” (Alison Castle).
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