I want to explore the concept of “left cycle” films using the article entitled “The Left and Right Cycles” by Robert Ray. To help me explore what makes up a “left cycle” film, I will compare two movies, both “left cycle” according to Ray. Those movies are “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Clockwork Orange”. What makes both of these movies “left cycle”, and how to they differ within that classification?
First, I think it is important to differentiate between the “left” and “right” movies. What Ray says to this is “the three factors that superficially divided them: the response to the frontier’s closing, the characteristics of the hero, and willingness to acknowledge self-consciousness.”
As for the first mentioned of the three factors dividing the “left” and “right” films, the “left” view as Ray puts it “insisted that all frontiers, geographical and metaphorical, had disappeared, and with them, the basis for certain lifestyles, institutions, and values premised on the existence of unlimited space.” In Dog Day Afternoon and Clockwork Orange, both films seem to be set in rather urban areas, which in itself gives off that atmospheric feeling of crowded space and limited time. But more importantly, both films show the economic depression within the cities they are set in. This I think goes against the optimism of the open expanse of the frontier and the promising future it represents.
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The disappearance of “all frontiers” that “left” films showcase gives a feeling of hopelessness within the lives of the characters in these films, and seems to be the catalyst and reason for their behavior. In Dog Day Afternoon, Sonny, a Vietnam vet, is living in New York City while a major economic depression is occurring. He decides to rob a bank, and as we learn especially through the scene where he is speaking to the media, he made this rash decision because of living in these circumstances that did not allow him to provide for the people he loved the way wanted to.
Alex, from Clockwork Orange is in the first part of the movie horrifically violent. He beats people up, rapes and kills. When his ability to be violent is taken away though, we see how absolutely violent people are towards Alex. It made me wonder if Alex’s violent behavior was a result of the world he grew up in, like it somehow made him the way he was. That world is shown to be the economically depressed England, a country that had been struggling since World War II. Here again we see how the lack of “all frontiers” in an economically depressed setting has a way of creating a character who, in response, would behave the way he does.
Speaking of the characters of Sonny and Alex, it brings me to the second factor that separates “left” and “right” films, that being “the characteristics of the hero.” Ray explains that the “left” films “used outlaws or outsiders to represent the counterculture’s own image of itself as in flight from a repressive society.”
Sonny is an outlaw because he has decided to break the law by robbing a bank, and when he is backed into a corner by the police, he refuses to give in. Even though Sonny has an accomplice with him, you still have the sense that he is all on his own. He alone must figure out how to rise against the system and rules that everybody else is forced to live by. Just the fact that Sonny is an outlaw however isn’t so much what makes this film “left”, it’s the fact that you find yourself rooting for him very early on. There are many things he does and says that show you he isn’t really a bad guy. Like he lets himself be concerned about the comfort of his hostages, so we know he doesn’t really plan on killing any of them. And it is fairly obvious that although Sonny has knowledge about how banks work, he has never robbed one before and makes many mistakes because of that. He is the underdog, a point that is really set in when you see the hundreds of policemen surrounding the bank.
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In the case of Alex, it is a bit more complicated. He is definitely an outlaw in that at the start of the movie he is breaking all kinds of laws. But he really genuinely seems to be a bad guy, unlike Sonny. Its important in a “left” film that even though the main character may be an outlaw, you still are on their side of things, and at first it is almost impossible to be on Alex’s side. However, my emotions towards Alex began to change slightly when I saw him being controlled and experimented on by the government in the later part of the film. Then I began to think maybe Alex wasn’t really the bad guy, but the government was, and I sort wanted to root for Alex by default. Also, Alex is narrating throughout the film, and although he came across to me as simpering and bit creepy, he is trying to be humble and I think asking the audience for their sympathies by the end.
This brings me to the last factor separating “left” films from “right” films. Ray says this is “willingness to acknowledge self-consciousness.” Ray goes on to explain that “Left movies displayed a marked self-consciousness about myths and conventions.” One way “left” films accomplished this was by “manipulated or reversed standard genre expectations,” but more importantly, these films “borrowed an obviously self-conscious device from the New Wave…in offering heroes who derived their behavior, and ultimately their sense of self, from the ready-made myths that surrounded them.”
In Dog Day Afternoon, I think the basic plot set-up of cops vs. robbers is reversed in expectation because the audience does find itself rooting for the robbers instead of the cops. One of the ways in which Sonny derived his behavior and his sense of self from the myths surrounding him was with his use of the whole Attica rebellion. The Attica prison riot in 1971 was when the prisoners at the Attica prison facility rebelled because of the poor living conditions they were suffering through. The police, ended up dealing with this problem by opening fire and killing many prisoners and hostages. Sonny, who understands the political meaning in this event, begins to yell “Attica!” when the hundreds of policemen are aiming their guns at him. By him doing this, he is applying the same political meaning to what he is doing. This is a turning point, because it takes his act of robbing a bank into a political uprising against “the man” you could say. It is like the counterculture vs. institution.
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In Clockwork Orange, the expectation that someone such as Alex, who has been doing all these horrible crimes, will be somehow stopped. This expectation is reversed however when we realize that perhaps the government that would ordinarily stop him is actually just as terrible as Alex. I think Alex buys into the myth surrounding him that he is somehow civilized and sophisticated. Although he is living in the economically depressed England at the time, it is shown that he comes from probably an upper-middle class family. His home, or actually more like his parents home, is expensively decorated in a sort of mod-style. He also is like obsessed with Beethoven’s 9th, and classical music also represents this sophistication he thinks he has. But in reality, Alex is quite like a baby. He and his gang drink from a milk bar, they wear diaper like uniforms when they commit crimes, and even the slang he uses sounds a bit like baby talk. And most of all, it is as though he is acting on urge like a baby would, and has not ever been socialized as all babies are, to have civilized morality.
Based on Robert Ray’s article about what makes up a “left” cycle film, I think both Dog Day Afternoon and Clockwork Orange, fall into that category. Both films represent the pessimistic view that all frontiers have disappeared. Both films have an outlaw, although it could be left up to the individual viewer as to whether or not they end up on Alex’s side. And in both films, we see classic genre expectations manipulated or reversed, and the characters buying into the cultural myths that surround them.
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