Sometime in the early nineties I introduced an acquaintance to Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s book ‘A Clockwork Orange’. This film was showing in the local art house cinema in the small town in Holland where I was living at the time.

I had assumed that everyone who had heard of the book or film might be aware that the dystopian narrative contained quite a few shocking, very visceral scenes – meant to upset the regular viewing experience when it first hit the silver screen in 1971.

So I was quite amazed to see a number of couples leaving in a huff after only fifteen or twenty minutes of first seeing Kubrick’s tour de force. Even some two decades after its first release, the film adaptation still packed enough of a punch to deliver that experience of shock and alienation for which it had been infamous all those years ago.

I took it as yet one more accolade for the enigmatic film director.