26 January 2011

Unseen Orange.


The legendary Stanley Kubrick was famed for his unique vision in his films, slick directing and pushing boundaries, with such memorable cult works as 2001, The Shining, Barry Lyndon, Spartacus, Dr Strangelove, Paths of Glory and of course the British cult classic A Clockwork Orange. A perfectionist, methodical, groundbreaking, meticulous attention to detail, slow but certain production, and obsessive in his work, away from the camera he was perceived as a bit of an eccentric, a recluse even, choosing to remain very private behind the scenes.
With that in mind, many of his finished works became just that, finished. There's many tales that once filming had wrapped any left over unused and unedited scenes, outtakes and prints cut from the films were pulped or incinerated at Kubrick's request, photographs, publicity stills and boxes of useful information remained a mystery, let's not forget dvds and their 'special features' were not even conceived in them days, never mind new found fans who demand much more content and of course more modern day hype - more product.
The 1971 cult British film A Clockwork Orange, which was withdrawn for decades until several years ago, granted a mainstream release after Kubrick's death in 1999, the film was largely only ever seen by a generation on crap quality third hand Betamax copies, and later foreign imports with fixed subtitiles, first time I saw it was on a Dutch copy which seemed a little scary after all the hype and hysteria to my young impressionable eyes. The posters, stills and action scenes were pretty paltry, always the same old, same old. Luckily enough, not everything remained a mystery, from the Kubrick archives - here's a great selection of seldom seen imagery from behind the camera, from outtakes to deleted scenes, props and publicity stills.
Above; Stanley Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell taking five minutes on location at Trinity Road subway, Wandsworth, a different version of a more infamous shot.


A still from an unseen deleted scene in the 'Duke of New York' pub aka The Rainbow Bar, 1971.



Two stills from another unused and unseen deleted scene which goes by the tag 'a Mackeral of a cornflake'. In the original novel.







5 comments:

  1. I'm in the US and I'm surprised to hear this movie was ever hard to come by. I was a teenager in the mid 90s, and lots of my peers watched this on VHS, obtaining American copies with no trouble from any video store or library. I probably first saw it in 1994. I knew a guy who had the poster image tattooed on his forearm the day he turned 18.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was hard to come by for many years, there was a common misconception it was banned outright, which wasn't the case, withdrawn from the UK so only availble underground or imports really. I'd had it on crap VHS copies and a laser disc (remember them) and knew it off by heart by the time it did eventually get a proper official release. It was good seeing it on the big screen though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Does this new font work? I quite like it, it's like my handwriting...

    ReplyDelete
  4. that first silhouette photograph is amazing.. the font works everywhere but the post body which may be intentional?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Not sure about the new font, yeah it looks like handwriting but in my case that's not a good thing,deffo harder to read for me but i'm old.
    JohnP

    ReplyDelete