Clip One, at the milk bar:
-With its gothic classical music (combined with electronic synthesizer that gives it an other-worldly sound), this scene establishes the status quo in this alternate post-industrial society. The youth are frightening; as you read or see in later scenes (such as the one with the singing Irish bum), the old have difficulty adapting to the moral emptiness and surviving it.

-The music itself incorporates elements of modernity and classicism as it is synthesized but with a classical basis. Its dissonance creates a feeling of terror even before the camera pans Alex (Malcolm MacDowell) and his "droogies."

-Notice the fashion: An amalgamation of 1920s silent movie style with suspenders, bowler hats and eye make-up with this all-white, ballet dancer-like outfit with a jockstrap-like thing to enhance masculinity. Much has been said about Stanley Kubrick's notion that the values of future society (or the future society from a 1971 viewpoint at least) would be very much based on visual dynamics. Of the boys, Alex is the most stylish and flashy in dress (for example, the eyelash and later, his 17th Century/Beatles' Sgt. Peppe-style purple coat), which is another cue that he is the ringleader.

-The milk bar itself incorporates elements of mod design, sex and a lack of togetherness in its set-up -- people are not allowed to face each other the way the furniture is arranged, for example, which is a subtle dystopianism. Despite the objectified women, the rest of the bar is stark, black and white, and presumably quiet with sort of the feel of an early 20th century Russian cabaret.

-The milk is drugged in such a way that it "sharpens them up for the ultraviolence" -- so even the drugs in this alternate society don't reflect the feel-good psychedelic or mellow depressant drugs. Think crystal meth. This not only is a further representation of dystopia, but a foreshadowing of a major theme of the cyberpunk genre: protagonists using drugs to "sharpen" their skills.

Clip Two, at the abandoned theater:

 
-When the camera first pans in, this definitely looks like a staged opera or theatrical production, which is an interesting play on Burgess’ idea that violence is the entertainment in this alternate society.

In the same vein, the ensuing fight looks like a choreographed ballet combined with an old Western bar fight. The classical music in the background, the ornate set, the mistrel-like but horrific carnival masks in the background, which are almost a foreshadowing to the guys’ masks in following scenes.

-Men in the opposing gang are wearing soldiers' garb with elements of Cold War society in them. The ringleader wears a red ribbon with a Russian cross around his neck, implying there has been some kind of political take-over by the then-Communist superpower. At the time the book was written, a preoccupation with communism and Cold War was prevalent. Russian elements incorporated in this society only further the dystopian feeling.

Clip Three, in the car:

-They are fleeing the police and going into the country. In the background, there are actually trees and Alex talks about the "real country dark," which is an interesting comment when you consider the different connotations of the word dark. It's sort of a "Machine in the Garden" feel with this loud, out of control car full of thugs, and it appears to be driving directly into you as an audience member -- again showing the threat to a “safe” place, or as Alexander Cohen called it, "cyburbia."

Clip Four, invasion of the Home:

-Although it first seems odd to have a large neon sign with capital letters announcing it a HOME, it further demonstrates that in this alternate world, one must actually have visual signifiers to separate the chaos of the city from safety, warmth and peace.

-HOME is actually a stark, gray modernist building hidden within the trees and almost reflecting the shape of the trees.
It resembles a fortress, which is probably not unintentional on Kubrick's part.

-The doorbell plays Beethoven's Fifth -- a little intertextual foreshadowing not noted in the book.

-The home is lined with mirrors, perhaps to show the excessiveness, self-consciousness, possibly even vanity of the  wealthy intellectual liberals. They also seem to amplify the violence that ensues -- indeed, a visualization of the "ol' ultraviolence."

-There is a theme here: Liberal intellectuals -- who supposedly care deeply about the plight of the inner city people -- live in their “safe” place out in the suburbs. 

-Alex’s use of a song from a happy Gene Kelly musical to actually commit violence is another blur on Kubrick and Burgess' theme of violence as entertainment. The blurring makes the scene all the more disturbing because it messes with personal memories, taking what most people think of as one of the most silly-happy musical scenes ever filmed and over-writing it with disturbing twisted violence.

Clip Five, back at the milkbar:

"Working hard, too" is the ironic comment that this is a different world in which violence is not some random, big deal -- but just another day at the office. It's an enormous expenditure of energy for the boys, and of course, it's also ironic because "Lucy" is not really working because she is not real. (This not-real woman is the only one Alex and Co. seem to have any respect for whatsoever.) The same dystopian overtones of the milkbar noted earlier still apply, but they are oddly resolved when normalcy enters milkbar and the seemingly-wealthy woman sings Alex's favorite, Ludwig Van’s "Ninth," or  "Ode to Joy."

Clip Six, at home in the eye of the storm:
Here we get a good, long look at Alex's living quarters, and, therefore, into his soul and the diverging influences that formed him.  Alex's room is bursting with postmodernity in all different shapes and sizes--postmodernism, that is, as a punning game played on the past by the present. Indeed, it is here that we realize that Alex is, in fact, the quintessential postmodern man.  Cohen puts it thusly: "As a po-mo pastiche of learnedness and stupidity, he is the inside-out reflection of the enlightenment subject."
    While Alex idles between bouts of ultraviolence with his mates, Ludwig Van watches over it all from his place on the back wall. Beneath the maestro stands the lord above, Jesus Christ, or, rather, four ceramic versions of the saviour, lined up in serial format. Even god, it seems, can be mass produced as art. Obvious references to biblical themes dominate here; another image is Alex's live snake crawling (visually) from a picture of Eve.
 
Clip Seven, mall rat:
Kubrick's glimpse into the more genteel forms of future pop is relegated entirely to Alex's brief sojourn to a local mall.  The mall itself is characterized by a striking similarity to the sixties conception of pop culture: Kubrick is not pushing ahead so much as sideways--our culture and our era, just viewed from a different perspective.
    Alex is back in full form here, merely playing a different character. Decked out in his gaberdine great coat, he looks more like Sherlock Holmes than a street tuff.  Alex is obviously re-imagining himself through history, into any character or persona he so desires.

Clip Eight, the cat woman's lair:

Cohen regards this, the scene in which Alex breaks into the cat woman's house by himself and kills her, as the pivotal scene in both book and movie. Certainly it represents Alex's climactic confrontation with the old, imagined empathy of the barricaded status quo, and, perhaps, Kubrick and Burgess's own confrontation with modernity and conformity.  The cat woman represents a world of different possibilities, best summed up as the fraudulence of the old guard and the avant gard. Alex, as a free agent in a quixotic and fickle world, is all-powerful pitted against the scathing, hollow attacks of the old woman.  She, after all, has condensed even male aggression into--and Cohen spends much of his time illustrating this point--modern art. The ceramic penis is a neutered, sterilized artifact of modernity's triumph over overt desire. Alex, however, allowed to play freely in the epicenter of modernist thought, "radically recontextualizes" his estranged manhood by using it to bludgeon the old school to death. In doing so, he tears open the fabric of modernity to prepare for the onslaught of the post; he also proves that even homicide is art in the new order. Mature audiences only, please.

Clip Nine, the morning after:
Alex's adventure redefining his world, however, must come to an end. Given up by his friends, Alex is confronted by most of the authority figures he has experienced; his counselor and the police. Alex is dismayed to hear that his encounter with the old school has proved fatal. It was all, in his mind at least, jest.  Here we see another element of what Burgess claimed he was trying to acheive in naming Alex as he did. Our protagonist is under the thumb here, and kubrick has carefully interpreted Burgess work to reveal that our sympathies here should lie with the criminal, rather than with the leering, frothing cops who have managed to trap him in a corner. Burgess, after all, chose "Alex" because it conveys a sense of sympathy, of "us" rather than "them."

Clip Ten, po-mo pastiche:

 Here is the meat of the po-mo prototype that Kubrick establishes in ACO. In a pastiche of dramatized re-visions of history, Alex literally imagines himself into the role of one of Christ's Roman legion tormentors and a variety of other, less obvious slices of past-meets-present imagery. Alex, contrary to the charge often leveled at his peers in literature, is not ignorant of history: quite to the contrary, he is fueled on it, he seeks its assurance like a nurturing protector. Alex sees justification for his own actions in the learned imagery, ironically, of the authority figures of yore. Here also, in the throes of his visual time travels, jacked into the essences of "justified" barbarity, delivers the final birth address of the new era:
"Oh gorgeousness and gorgeosity; a bird of rarest spun heaven metal; silvery wine floating in a space ship; gravity all nonsense now..."

Clip 11, free will discussion:

In this scene, the priest tells Alex that, "goodness comes from within...it is chosen.  When a man ceases to choose, he ceases to be a man."  This reminds us of the beginning of "1984" when the prisoner wrote, "In a time of thought police...greetings from a dead man."  These two instances illustrate the dystopian view of technology that it will eventually lead to the death of man himself.  Alex may become good in the sense that he no longer does bad, but he is being killed as a human being able to choose whether to do good or bad.

This breaks from the dystopian tradition as seen in Frankenstein.  There we saw man creating something autonomous that would later lead to his demise.  here, we see the tinkering within man himself.  It's the transforming of man into robot instead of creating robot in the likeness of man.  Progress is seen as eliminating man's choice to do evil.

 
Clip 12, the video scene: 
 
 

 Here we see the new technology which is really replacing man's retina with the video screen.  We've spoken a lot about detachment from origins and history in Postmodernism.  In "1984", history and words were erased.  Here, emotions are being removed and replaced with new feeling--those of sickness when seeing violence and sex.  Alex doesn't know the origins of his own feelings.  By having so many empty seats in that theater, we're led to believe that this experimental treatment will fill the theater with deviants.  Feelings themselves will be mass produced.  This will lead to the state's ultimate control over man.  Man, if his emotions can be negated will be completely efficient.  This is how some people view what they see as the ultimate stage of capitalism...when man becomes completely efficient, almost a machine.
 
 
 
 
Clip 13, temptation:

 
This clip shows us the results of the association between sex and violence on the videos and the body's sickness.  The scene is interesting because it shows the hypocrisy of authority.  After turning Alex into a zombie, they tantalized him for show.  In the crowd, sits the hitler figure--the prison guard.  he is there to make us question who is really evil in this film, the young punks or the adults in authority.
 

Clip 14, bums a beating:

 
This scene is another example of the results of behavior modification.  Alex is paralyzed as the old bums beat him up or "old age having a go at youth.  The cinematography in this scene is superb as the camera focuses in on each old man individually.  After he is beaten by his elders, he is faced with the brutality of his peers.  We see the corruption of authority in society as his former droogs turn out to be police.  Alex has been reduced to a non-human as he cannot even defend himself in the face of violence.
 

Academic look at "ACO"'s use of violence

The Aestheticization of Violence

The postmodern “joke” of stealing from past works that steal from past works

Nietzsche reference

Ask a linguist on Clockwork Orange

Themes from New Zealand scholar Bryce Utting

Kind of a review/scholarly analysis
 

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