Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara 
Storytelling for the Screen:
A Clockwork Orange
- Tuesday, December 3, 2013 / 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM (PST)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: 4K digital projection (136 minutes)
- With Malcolm McDowell (actor)
The Carsey-Wolf Center and the Department of Film and Media Studies at UCSB were honored to celebrate the classic and controversial Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange (1971). Set in a near-future Britian and adapted from Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel of the same name, A Clockwork Orange follows juvenile delinquent Alex DeLarge (Malcom McDowell) and his gang of “Droogs” as they spend their evenings indulging in classical music, ultraviolence, and sadistic thrills. After Alex is finally apprehended and imprisoned, he submits to an experimental modification technique in exchange for his freedom. Whether this leaves him better off, however, is yet to be seen.
An unnerving and unrestrained social commentary on the nature of evil and the limits of both social order and free will, A Clockwork Orange continues to polarize audiences to this day. Upon its release, the film earned a number of accolades, including four Academy Award nominations and a Golden Globe nomination for McDowell’s portrayal of Alex DeLarge.
Actor Malcolm McDowell joined moderator Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of A Clockwork Orange and McDowell’s extraordinary career.
Biographies
Actor Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor, known for his boisterous and sometimes villainous roles. He trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Throughout a career spanning over fifty years, McDowell has played various film roles across different genres as a character actor. He is perhaps best known for the controversial roles of Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), the title character in Tinto Brass’s Caligula (1979), and Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson’s trilogy of if…. (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973), and Britannia Hospital (1982). He is also known for his work in Cat People (1982), Tank Girl (1995), the 2007 remake of Halloween, Easy A (2010), and The Artist (2011).
McDowell has had recurring roles in numerous TV shows, such as Star Trek Generations (1994), Entourage (2004), Heroes (2006), and The Mentalist (2008). He narrated the 1982 documentary The Compleat Beatles, and in recent years has become a prolific voice actor in films, TV shows, and video games. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012.
Moderator Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies, UCSB)
Ross Melnick specializes in media industry history and analysis, film, radio, and television history, archival theory and practice, silent cinema, early radio and media convergence, newsfilm, and U.S. and global film exhibition. His most recent book is American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry, 1908-1935 (Columbia University Press, 2012). His articles have been published in Cinema Journal, Film History, The Moving Image, and Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (forthcoming).
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center and the Department of Film and Media Studies.
Storytelling for the Screen
Since their emergence, cinema and television have been in a state of constant technological and industrial flux. But even as our ways of distributing and accessing moving images have changed, and even as tastes and styles continue shifting with the times, our passion for compelling onscreen storytelling persists. At the Carsey-Wolf Center, we are committed to fostering a nuanced understanding of cinematic and televisual storytelling across genres, formats, styles, and historical periods. To this end, we sponsor a wide range of events, programs, and workshops designed to cultivate a new generation of media storytellers, and to help audiences better understand the evolving role of narrative across diverse media forms.