Stanley Kubrick's controversial film triggered copycat violence on its initial release and as a result the director withdrew the film from circulation in Britain, keeping it suppressed right up to his death in 1999. The film follows sadistic punk Alex (Malcolm McDowell) as he takes his gang on a rape and murder spree, showing absolutely no mercy to any of his victims. When he is eventually captured, the authorities subject him to a series of experiments designed to rid him of his violent tendencies.

When fashion photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) develops the negatives of some film he has taken of an embracing couple in a park, he notices that there is a gunman lurking in the bushes behind them. Returning to the scene, he discovers the corpse of the male half of the couple, but, when he visits the site the following morning, the body has disappeared. Michelangelo Antonioni's arty musing on the nature of film, set against a Swinging London backdrop, also features Vanessa Redgrave as the dead man's lover.