Along with Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Wild Bunch (1969), Soldier Blue (1970), Dirty Harry (1971), and Straw Dogs (1971), the film is considered a landmark in the relaxation of control on violence in cinema.[92]
A Clockwork Orange remains an influential work in cinema and other media. The film is frequently referenced in popular culture, which Adam Chandler of The Atlantic attributes to Kubrick's "genre-less" directing techniques that brought novel innovation in filming, music, and production that had not been seen at the time of the film's original release.[93]
The Village Voice ranked A Clockwork Orange at number 112 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.[94] The film appears several times on the American Film Institute's (AFI) top movie lists. The film was listed at No. 46 in the 1998 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies,[95] at No. 70 in the 2007 second listing.[96] "Alex DeLarge" is listed 12th in the villains section of the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains.[97] In 2008, the AFI's 10 Top 10 rated A Clockwork Orange as the 4th greatest science-fiction movie to date.[98] The film was also placed 21st in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills[99]
In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the world's greatest films, A Clockwork Orange was ranked 75th in the directors' poll and 235th in the critics' poll.[100] In 2010, Time magazine placed it 9th on their list of the Top 10 Ridiculously Violent Movies.[101] In 2008, Empire ranked it 37th on their list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time", and in 2013, Empire ranked it 11th on their list of "The 100 Best British Films Ever".[102] In 2010, The Guardian ranked the film 6th in its list of 25 greatest arthouse films.[103] The Spanish director Luis Buñuel praised the film highly. He once said: "A Clockwork Orange is my current favourite. I was predisposed against the film. After seeing it, I realised it is only a movie about what the modern world really means".[13]
A Clockwork Orange was added to the United States' National Film Registry in 2020 as a work considered to be "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant.[104]
