Production Year: 1966 - Science Fiction - Director: Francois Truffaut - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring: Jeremy Spenser, Alex Scott, Oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring more
leading directors of the French New Wave, François Truffaut. But from the opening credits onward (spoken, not written on screen), Truffaut takes Bradbury's fascinatin...
leading directors of the French New Wave, François Truffaut. But from the opening credits onward (spoken, not written on screen), Truffaut takes Bradbury's fascinatin...
Fahrenheit 451 DVD
In a dark futuristic world literature reading and independent thought have been ... more
outlawed. The government has gone so far as to employ a special league of firemen to burn all books on sight. But when one otherwise obedient fireman meets an intriguing...
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury's best selling science fiction masterpiece about a future without books takes ... more
on a chillingly realistic dimension in this film classic directed by one of the most important screen innovators of all time, the late Francois Truffaut. Julie Christie stars in the challenging dual role of Oskar Werner's pleasure-seeking conformist wife, Linda and his rebellious, book-collecting mistress, Clarisse.Montag (Oskar Werner), a regimented fireman in charge of burning the forbidden volumes, meets a revolutionary school teacher who dares to read. Suddenly he finds himself a hunted fugitive, forced to choose not only between two women, but between personal safety and intellectual freedom. Truffaut's first English language production is an eerie fable where mankind becomes the ultimate evil.
Fahrenheit 451
The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are ... more
burned by a special task force of firemen. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books which are forbidden being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department armed with a lethal hypodermic escorted by helicopters is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books. The classic novel of a post-literate future 'Fahrenheit 451' stands alongside Orwell's '1984' and Huxley's 'Brave New World' as a prophetic account of Western civilization's enslavement by the media drugs and conformity. Bradbury's powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which over fifty years from first publication still has the power to dazzle and shock.
Fahrenheit 451 - 8445076418
InFahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't ... more
put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family", imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbour Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature. Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays and poems, includingThe Martian ChroniclesandThe Illustrated Man--is the winnerof many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers aged 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense ofFahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman
Production Year: 2007 - Science Fiction - Director: Francis Lawrence - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Dash Mihok, Will Smith, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith
Production Year: 2006 - Science Fiction - Director: James Hawes - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring: Noel Clarke, Camille Coduri, Penelope Wilton, David Tennant, Billie Piper
A review by theblackstar on Fahrenheit 451 (DVD) October 26th, 2004
Author's product rating:
Did you enjoy it?
Indifferent to it
Story
Good
Characters / Performances
Satisfactory
Special Effects
Unmemorable
How does it compare to similar films?
Satisfactory
Advantages:
May make people want to read the book
Disadvantages:
Another failed attempt to make a classic book into a film
Recommend to potential buyers:
no
Full review
Starring: Oskar Werner, Julie Christie
Director: Francois Truffaut
Release: 1966
NB: This film / book is to be remade, and due for release in 2005.
Firstly in reviewing this film I had to do what many had failed to do, and separate it from the book by Ray Bradbury. The book is a true masterpiece which many film reviewers seem to confuse with what is not the best film in the world. Maybe its their disappointment at a less than perfect cross-over from text to film, but hopefully that maybe put right by the release of a new version of the film next year.
Now to get back to the actual 1966 version of the film that this review is supposed to be about. Now Truffaut a giant of French cinema took a book that was set in a future place not unlike that of the occupied France of World War 2. Strong overtones of a fascistic world, with democracy gone crazy and state control permeating every aspect of our lives. Here firemen burn books, Fahrenheit 451 being the temperature at which book paper burns. Taking the Bradbury book, Truffaut was obviously commenting on French life through the use of an English book, written about a future fascist state, and in so making a quintessentially French film, but in English! Confused?! Well quite! So it seems is this film. I understand that film was difficult to make, and almost never got made, and you can tell. The film feels uncomfortable with itself, and unfortunately takes away from the viewers feeling of discomfort with the subject matter.
The premise, (which is better covered in my review of the book) is a future society when all printed materials like books are banned. Free thinkers, in fact just simply people who dare to think for themselves are seen as a threat to the state. Conformity is the way forward, and the individual is hounded to the point of extinction. People watch huge screen TV’s and interact with their favourite soap-opera (sound familiar?)
It is the job of the firemen to burn books, quite obviously turning our society on its head. They sniff out subversives who maybe hiding books. In the book they actually have sniffer dogs that hunt down those who possess books, this element as are many others are missing from the film. Montag (Werner) is married to Linda (Christie), he is a fireman and she spends everyday taking state provided drugs and watching TV. He comes across Clarisse (also Christie), a younger free-thinking version of his wife. She sparks something that he’d hidden within himself, and soon he finds himself taking books instead of burning them, and even eventually reading them! There are consequences to this and Montag’s secret is not kept for very long, betrayal follows, and the whole machine of state control looms over Montag for his crime of reading and subsequently having thoughts that are not those of the state.
One of the notable things about this film which is slightly clever and a little un-nerving, is the lack of text. The titles are read out loud, when Montag picks-up a newpaper it is all pictures. The only text in the whole film is a glimpse when you catch a book burning, and right at the end when you see the words The End.
Advantages: A unique and great movie Disadvantages: No one
In my idea, this is one of movies, (perhaps the only one..) that has absilutely nothing to envy to the book fron which it was developed. (The book itself is a master work, that only a wonderful writer like Bradbury would have been capable to write.)
Above all, what strikes me more is the atmosphere of the movie. The world introduced from the movie is clearly (and willingly) false, and the thing is, in my opinion, not only due to the classical hyconograpy ... ...but also to the need to reproduce the total estrangement of that world. The whole book is crossed from a subtle feeling: there is something strange in the air, you can perceive it, you can feel that something doesn't go well, but is difficult to understand what it should be... in the movie, also, this feeling is very well and easily perceiving! The history, very famous ideeed, is that of a future world where people spend their time in a reciprocal ...
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Advantages: Imaginative, strange and original in parts Disadvantages: Confusing and annoying at times
A very bizare and interesting film which throws out some thought provoking idea's. An adaptation of a Ray Bradbury novel of the same name which is not as clear or concise as the book but is a pretty good adaptation. The film stars Oskar Werner and Julie Christie, who give excellent performances, if sometimes Werner is a little wooden. Anyone who is interested in futuristic or Big Brother style films should watch this, its not as good as Brazil or ... ...Werner is a fireman, but in this version of the future firemen do not put out fire they start them! To be precise they burn books, which have been outlawed along with any sort of free thinking. They ride in their rather ridiculous looking fire engine to the scene, where they have recived a tip off that someone posses a book, they break in confiscate the books then burn them in the street. The owners are dragged off to be interogated and are unlikely ...
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![Fahrenheit 451 [DVD] [1966]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/79606534.jpg)
