Every so often a nude scene gets paired with a song that, for better or worse, ends up making it that much more memorable, and this Tunes-day’s offering is nothing less than iconic.
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These days, directors are all about the startling juxtaposition of extreme violence with jovial, even sometimes calming music. The technique is generally referred to as “soundtrack dissonance” and before Tarantino was playing Stealer’s Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You” while someone’s ear was getting cut off in Reservoir Dogs or Martin Scorsese had a guy get a severe beatdown to Donovan’s “Atlantis” in Goodfellas, Stanley Kubrick had the best example in the Oscar-nominated adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.
Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s Singin’ in the Rain is widely considered to be one of the best movie musicals in existence, and Kelly’s version of the title track is masterful. You may have heard it while picking out vegetables at the grocery store as they get hosed down, but it’s just romantic, light-hearted bop about a guy so in love he doesn’t care that he’s in the middle of a monsoon.
Adrienne Corri Nude in A Clockwork Orange
Or at least, it was. Until Malcolm McDowell was filming a scene in the 1971 Kubrick film where he and his Droogs terrorize a rich couple in their home and he got the idea to break into song. McDowell busts out the familiar tune while cutting up Adrienne Corri’s clothes and exposing her breasts and bush before engaging in the ol’ "in-out-in-out.”
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Despite it being a interesting choice, since we know at this point in the film that McDowell’s character is more partial to Beethoven than Broadway (that's a whole other blog post entirely), it’s still a powerful one that Kubrick loved and decided to go with. It’s not any easy task to make both a beloved song AND amazing full frontal from a beauty like Adrienne awkward and hard to take in (as brutality should be), but McDowell and Kubrick definitely succeeded, plus it ends up becoming a major plot point in the end.
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Supposedly, Malcolm felt guilty about it for years after. After being epically snubbed by Gene at a Warner Bros party, Malcolm is quoted as having said “Can you blame the poor man? I took his wonderful moment and completely fucked with it.” But the story goes on that Malcolm eventually met Gene’s widow years later and she informed him that he was upset because Kubrick never actually paid for use of the song.
So, perhaps if Gene was okay with it, we should be too.
