A Clockwork Orange Opening Scene Analysis ☮ ☮ ☮

The film "A Clockwork Orange"(1971) is a horror, thriller film focused on the menacing character Alex De large, The film is set in Britain but in the future, where he and his "droogs" go on a rampage of violent and sinister quests in order to mug and harm others purely for the benefit of themselves and to get a thrill from it all. With Alex having been arrested and tested by a new program to hate violence, his sentence reduced and back on the streets, how will Alex act ?

The first thing that pops onto the screen is a blood red solid background with the song "Part 2" By anonymous, which has a very low drums and and a futuristic keyboard low high noted sound , setting an uneasy and eerie mood, the blood red colour also suggests to the audience that the film is going to be violent, and must play a big role in this film if this is the first thing we are illustrated too.Although the solid red then changes to a royal solid blue colour, which shows a big contrast to the previous colour, illustrating to the audience that the film can take some unexpected shocking and changing turns, this colour is also then changed back to the blood red where the films title in a bold white appears "A clockwork orange".

Suddenly a close up shot appears on the screen of a man in a black top hat, which a menacing look on his face tilted downwards making his eyes bulge attracting the audience to look into them, we also see that the mans left eye has a very long dark pair of eyelashes, with his other eye having none at all, this shows a feminine look to the character but also a rougher side due to his other eye being appearing lash-less and having the demonising facial expression that he is pulling. His hair also seems to be neat and in a bobbed style also showing a feminine likeness to him, The man is also wearing a white shirt which is unbuttoned at the top showing he is quite casual even though he is wearing his top hat, this contrasts to his black background where his shirt pops off the screen.

The camera then begins to pan outwards showing the man surrounded by men in the same attire as him, introducing the audience to the presumed main characters friends perhaps, as the character is shown more we see him raise a glass of milk to his lips, where he doesn't remove eye contact from the camera showing a dominant personality, the milk itself also shows a child like quality as what appears to be a dark nightclub or bar setting the character is drinking milk instead of an alcoholic drink to which you would have thought a person of his age would drink, which looks to the audience late teens early twenties perhaps.

The camera then pans out further to reveal that the man beside him has blood on his shirt, suggesting to the audience that as it seems the men appear to be unharmed that they have harmed someone else. We also see that as the man who opened the scene has also got some blood on the cuff of his sleeve as he raised his glass to drink, we also see that due to him being in the middle of the four that he is the leader of their group. The camera pans out further to a long shot where we see the men resting their legs on what appears to be white statues of naked women, showing a weird and perverting sense to the men, making them seem as if they have little to no respect for women as the statues seem to have been made to wear makeup and have colourful feather bowers wrapped around them. The camera then coming to a wide shot of the scene , we gather that the place in which the scene is set is indeed a bar and then we hear a non diegetic sound of narrative over the music in a croaky and sinister voice, "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs", due to the high focus on the character in the middle of the four we gather the narrator to be referring to this character (himself) to be Alex, and gather that the three surrounding him are his "droogs", to which the audience wouldn't know the meaning of.

The camera does not halt as it continues to pan further out showing a wider and wider shot, showing the characters centred at the back to be the main focus still as Alex's narrative continues, to which he confirms they were in a bar, but a milk bar, which Alex claimed that " This would sharpen you up and make you ready for, a bit of the old ultraviolnce" to which the dark and eerie music becomes louder and higher showing the character as twisted and frightening. Thus confirming the violent and dark themes through the colours at the beginning of the film we see that our supposed protagonist is going to be on terms of liking him a mixed emotional type.