MUMBAI: The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will celebrate the life and career of Malcolm McDowell with an onstage discussion and a 40th anniversary screening of a digital restoration of A Clockwork Orange on 16 September, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The pre-screening discussion with McDowell will be led by Los Angeles Times writer Geoff Boucher.

After appearing on television and in bit parts with the Royal Shakespeare Company, McDowell burst onto the big screen in If…, Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 satire of British boarding school life. That performance caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick, who then chose McDowell to portray Alex DeLarge, the leader of a merry band of thugs who relish a bit of ultra-violence, in his adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange.

Kubrick’s film features a juxtaposition of music (including that of Alex’s cherished ‘Ludwig van’) with violent imagery, and hinges upon McDowell’s performance as the hoodlum who is subjected to an experimental behavior modification program. A Clockwork Orange garnered four Academy Award nominations and solidified McDowell’s status as a versatile actor of the 1970s.