Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange adap­ta­tion is still the best, but it wasn’t the first

Stan­ley Kubrick’s adap­ta­tion of Antho­ny Burgess’ 1962 nov­el ​‘A Clock­work Orange’ was famous­ly with­drawn from UK cin­e­mas in 1973 at the director’s request. The film acquired cult sta­tus dur­ing its quar­ter cen­tu­ry of unavail­abil­i­ty and remains syn­ony­mous with the orig­i­nal book – yet Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange was not the first screen adap­ta­tion of this clas­sic dystopi­an satire. Six years before Kubrick’s ver­sion was released, Andy Warhol used Burgess’ text as the basis for his own fea­ture, Vinyl. Exam­in­ing these adap­ta­tions side by side reveals many contrasts.

Vinyl and A Clock­work Orange open on a sim­i­lar note – an extreme close-up of the protagonist’s face as he stares direct­ly into the cam­era – but diverge sig­nif­i­cant­ly there­after. There were some prac­ti­cal rea­sons for this: there is some dis­pute over whether Warhol for­mal­ly obtained the rights to adapt the book; accord­ing to some sources he paid $3000, while oth­ers argue his endeav­our was unau­tho­rised. This is often cit­ed as the rea­son for changes to char­ac­ter names and events, includ­ing the pro­tag­o­nist Alex being renamed Vic­tor. Warhol’s use of time and loca­tion is also rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent: Vinyl large­ly takes place in a night­club, with the artist-film­mak­er con­dens­ing the time and space of the nov­el so that mul­ti­ple events occur simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in the same room.

Run­ning at 70 min­utes (almost half the length of Kubrick’s ver­sion), Vinyl is as loose, unre­hearsed and impro­vi­sa­tion­al as A Clock­work Orange is metic­u­lous­ly stylised and con­trolled. Warhol’s cam­era is most­ly sta­ble in Vinyl, the entire film con­sist­ing of only a hand­ful of extend­ed takes, in con­trast to the lens of A Clock­work Orange which moves and pur­sues its char­ac­ters relent­less­ly in shot after shot. The films also dif­fer in their use of colour, as sig­nalled by their respec­tive title cards: Vinyl is in black-and-white, con­scious­ly evok­ing the look of actu­al vinyl records, while A Clock­work Orange uses a palette of shades as bold as the one in its name.

While music plays a key role in both films, their sound­track choic­es bear lit­tle resem­blance. Vinyl’s club set­ting fea­tures the cast danc­ing to songs of the era includ­ing the Rolling Stones, while Kubrick’s film makes exten­sive use of clas­si­cal music, stick­ing more close­ly to the source mate­r­i­al in this respect by draw­ing upon the novel’s ref­er­ences to Beethoven. But they do share a sig­nif­i­cant trait in their insis­tence on the rep­e­ti­tion of music: Martha and the Van­del­las’ ​‘Nowhere to Run’ plays twice in Vinyl, while ​‘Sin­gin’ in the Rain’ recurs three times in A Clock­work Orange.

Inter­est­ing­ly, while Kubrick’s film is the more faith­ful adap­ta­tion over­all, the end­ing of Warhol’s film is arguably clos­er in spir­it to the book’s con­clu­sion. An ear­ly draft of the nov­el end­ed with Alex chang­ing his mind about his destruc­tive ways, but Burgess’ US pub­lish­er con­vinced him to drop the chap­ter. Kubrick claimed he was unaware of an alter­nate end­ing until deep in pre-pro­duc­tion, show­ing lit­tle inter­est in it: his adap­ta­tion con­cludes with Alex fan­ta­sis­ing about more vio­lence. In con­trast, Vinyl fin­ish­es with Vic­tor hug­ging the doc­tor who has been tor­ment­ing him and seem­ing to be gen­uine­ly reborn. Though not with­out ambi­gu­i­ty, this redemp­tive end­ing strikes a very dif­fer­ent chord to the cli­max of Kubrick’s film.

Vinyl too was unavail­able to view for many years, also at its maker’s request – although in Warhol’s case this was not due to exter­nal con­tro­ver­sies but a con­se­quence of his deci­sion in 1970 to remove most of his films from pub­lic cir­cu­la­tion. Did Warhol or Kubrick ever see each other’s adap­ta­tions? It seems unlike­ly, not least because when asked about ​“under­ground” film­mak­ers like Warhol in a 1980 inter­view, Kubrick was dis­mis­sive of the qual­i­ty of films asso­ci­at­ed with that movement.

The 1971 ver­sion of ​‘A Clock­work Orange’ remains the most suc­cess­ful and wide­ly known. Vinyl is gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the less­er work, and is rarely spo­ken of in the con­text of Warhol’s film achieve­ments. Yet togeth­er these films are one of the best exam­ples of how two film­mak­ers can cre­ate some­thing com­plete­ly unique from the same source material.