Best movies of the 70s [antikvár]

THE SKEPTICAL EYENotes on the Cinema of the 70s"Municipal Fiatbiocl< 18a, Linear Nortti.Ttiis was wtiere i iived with my dadda and mum," says Alex (Malcolm McDowell), as he strolls home whistling between the houses of a suburban housing development somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The place is like a labyrinth. Lights bum in a few windows, weakly illuminating the protagonist's path. There's something strangely static about the camera that accompanies him through these streets it) a single parallel tracking shoL The dramatic impression is not created by IHollywood's standard techniques - shot/reverse shot - but by a camera that glides like a ghost through dilapidated flowerbeds full of discarded junk.In this dismal environment, the film's young hero is the only sign of life, and he's Just enjoyed a good night ouL Alex and his droogs have tol-chocked an old tramp and a writer, raped a devotchka, stolen a car, and forced a respectable number of fellow-drivers into the roadside ditch. Hor-rorshow.Alex is in a splendid mood. Accompanying him homewards, we become highly aware of the camera's presence. We're waiting for a cut, but the camera does not blink, staring persistently at Alex as it slides along at his side. What we see here is more than a happily whistling hoodlum; we're seeing the fact that we see him.Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Omnge (1971, p. 58) is one of the key cult movies of the 70s, and certainly the most controversial. It might be described as the hinge that links the 60s with the 70s, for Kubrick's film may well be seen as a skeptical critique of the ideals formulated by the 60s student movement. Yet although the movie makes constant allusions to the progressive optimism of that decade, its purview includes the entire century and the inhuman Ideologies that marked it out.it's hard to think of another film that assigns us the role of voyeur so effectively, in a shocking way, A Clockwork Orange makes all of share responsibility for the things it shows. THus the eloquent off-screen narrator who tells us his story never doubts for a second that he has our sympathy -and our consenL Again and again, he addresses us as "brothers." Stiil, the risk remains that we might have to see things from another perspective; and once, indeed, we find ourselves in the role of the victim - with Alex insisting we take a veddy good look In this respect, Kubrick plays with the viewer's expectations. The film insists on breaking the bounds of fiction and assigning a series of different roles to us, the spectators. It's as if the director wanted to demonsfrate his awareness of the pleasure we take in voyeurism, while also demanding that we see the worid through Alex's eyes.