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Vrai nom Alex
Alex DeLarge est le personnage principal du roman de science-fiction d'Anthony Burgess L'Orange mécanique écrit en 1962, et du film Orange mécanique de Stanley Kubrick en 1971. Il s'agit d'un adolescent de 14 ans passionné par la musique de Ludwig van Beethoven, spécialement la 9e symphonie, par le sexe et l'« ultraviolence ».
Biographie
Alex lives with his parents in a block of flats in a dystopian England in which his brand of "ultraviolence" is common. At the age of 15, he is already a veteran of state reform institutions. (In the film, he is somewhat older.) While the youngest of his gang, he is the most intelligent, and designates himself as the leader. Another member of the gang, Georgie, resents his high-handedness, and begins plotting against him. One night, the gang breaks into a woman's house, and Alex assaults and kills her. As Alex flees from the police, Dim hits him with his chain (a milk bottle in the film) and leaves him to be arrested. Alex is found guilty of murder and sentenced to a lengthy prison term.
Over the next three years, Alex is a model prisoner, endearing himself to the prison chaplain by studying the Bible. (He is especially fond of the passages in the Old Testament portraying torture and murder.) Eventually, prison officials recommend him for the Ludovico Technique, an experimental treatment designed to eliminate criminal impulses. During the treatment, prison doctors inject him with a drug that makes him nauseous and make him watch films portraying murder, torture and rape. The treatment conditions him to associate violent thoughts and feelings with sickness. Alex is particularly affected by watching footage of Nazi war crimes set to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, one of his favorite pieces of music, and he can no longer hear it without feeling sick.
His sentence is commuted to time served, and he is released. Once he returns to society, however, he finds that the treatment worked too well: any thought of violence brings him to his knees with pain, and he cannot defend himself. He is rejected by his parents, brutalized by his former victims, and beaten by his two former accomplices, Georgie and Dim, who are now police officers.
He collapses in front of an old house, owned by a writer the government considers "subversive". The writer is one of the gang's victims, but he does not recognize Alex, who had been wearing a mask as he and his friends beat the man and gang-raped his wife, who later died of her injuries. When Alex tells him of his plight, the writer promises to help him. However, the writer realizes who Alex is upon hearing him singing "Singin' in the Rain", the very song he had sung while raping his wife. He drugs Alex and forces him to listen to the Ninth Symphony, which causes Alex so much pain that he attempts suicide by jumping out of the window.
He survives, but is badly injured, and wakes up in a state hospital. His parents take him back, while the government, smarting from the bad publicity, gives him a well-paying job. The treatment, meanwhile, has worn off, and Alex is his old ultraviolent self again: "I was cured all right."
While the film ends here, the novel features an additional chapter in which Alex, now a few years older, outgrows his sociopathy and begins to think about starting a family.Ses meilleurs films
(1972) Joué par les acteurs