Fahrenheit 451

As an avid reader and lifelong book lover, there's no way this movie couldn't affect me personally! A world without books??? NEVER!!! Whether paper, online or audio, they'd better be here to stay!!!!

The movie gets off to a good start, by showing the firemen off to what at first you may think is to fight a fire, when actually they're going to start one, by searching for and burning books! In this society, they're banned (why make people think and learn, when the soulless robots on what passes for TV can do your thinking for you and teach you enough to live in their one-dimensional society?)

The number 451 pops up all over: at the fire station, at the address of the fireman-turned-rebel, Montag (Oskar Werner), and of course, it's the temperature that paper from those outlawed books will burn! You see conflagration after conflagration of precious volumes and titles set to flame, all for your own good, of course!

Oskar does a good job as a dedicated servant of this braindead society, who comes to realize how wrong it is, and starts fighting back, even if it means committing an unforgivable crime.

Julie Christie also does good in a dual role; as Montag's wife, Linda, who listens more to the "family" on the TV screen than to her husband, and as Clarisse, a nonconformist schoolteacher that Montag gets to know while commuting to and from work. Through her, he learns there's more to life than he's been living, and much of that can be learned through those volumes he keeps destroying. When Clarisse asks if he ever read any of those confiscated books, he soon finds himself looking through a volume of "David Copperfield", and nothing's the same after that.

It's worth noting how something as simple as a hairstyle can enhance characterization. As Linda, Julie's hair is long and stylish (as are her clothes) and she gives a fashion model appearance. Her character, however, is vapid and bland. Aside from her addiction to TV and pills, she seems soulless and unfeeling. Even her seduction of Montag (not long after getting her stomach pumped) comes across as mechanical, without any real desire. She can't even remember when they first met, which gives you an idea of her true feelings for her husband!

As the short haired, plainly dressed Clarisse, Julie really becomes a whole other person, one who thinks for herself, feels strongly, and cries when a little boy at the school from where she's been fired (Mark Lester, two years before "Oliver") runs away from her. Unlike all the other modern, fireproof structures, she lives in an older building, that may be flammable but has a lot of character.

What stands out most is the solution a group of nonconformists found to the problem of destroyed books, a way to ensure they live on!! It gives what could have been a dismal film an upbeat ending.

Well worth watching!

After reading several whinny comments about how the movie is so different from the book I just had to add my two cents. Hello people! These are two different mediums here, like comparing Katherine Hepburn to Audrey Hepburn. They are two different entities which stand alone on their own merits.

I read the book years and years ago, and frankly, I don't remember much about it. I'd seen the movie in years past, and it never knocked my socks off. But upon viewing it last night, I have to say I found myself thoroughly engrossed in it. The scene in the monorail where all the passengers are trying to stimulate themselves through their sense of touch is quite moving. As is the neighbor who declares, "They aren't like us, are they?"

It's never going to be a movie in which you want to see over and over again (like the fluffy Wizard of Oz, again a book that is totally different from the movie, where are the complaining people now?) but it's a movie that should be seen. I also wonder how many people will complain when the new version comes out? I can hear them now, "The first movie was so much better!"

Fahrenheit 451" is a strange film, hard to describe. No one could have interpreted the classic Bradbury novel in the same bizarre, fascinating manner as Francois Truffaut. It's a book, and a film, about freedom, choices, individuality, and intellectual repression in a future where books are forbidden; where Firemen are men who start fires...fires in which they burn books.

It was also the first color film directed by Truffaut. Although he by all accounts was not happy about making a color film and found it a bit unsettling, color is used to great effect here; sparingly, except for the extreme shade of red that is seen throughout.

"Fahrenheit 451" is supposed to be the temperature at which book paper catches fire, as the protagonist Guy Montag (Oskar Werner) explains in a scene at the beginning. Guy is a Fireman who seems happy enough with his life until he is approached by a young woman named Clarisse (Julie Christie) on his way home from work one day. She starts up a conversation with him, and the two become friendly. She bewilders him but challenges him to think and feel....and read. And when he arrives home we see his wife (also played by Julie Christie, with long hair), sedated and watching the wallscreen (TV of sorts)...we see what his life is really like, although he had told Clarisse he was "happy"...he is not.

As his friendship with Clarisse grows, he starts to secretly take home, hoard, and read some of the books he finds in the course of his daily work, and as he reads, he becomes obsessed with the books. They become his mistress, and are what finally make him feel affection and warmth. And when he starts to feel and care, so do we.

The two single best scenes are a passionate one involving an old woman who refuses to leave her books, her "children" as she calls them; and the wonderful ending of the film. The countless, painful closeups of books as they are being burned are beautifully done, and difficult to watch.

Truffaut was a well-known disciple of Alfred Hitchcock's films, so when Hitchcock fired his long-time music collaborator Bernard Herrmann during the filming of "Torn Curtain", Truffaut was thrilled to acquire his talents for his own film. The score for "F451" is beautiful, and the film would not be nearly as effective without it.

Writer/producer/director Frank Darabont ("The Green Mile", "The Shawshank Redemption") is working on a new film of "Fahrenheit 451" this year. He says it won't be a remake of the original film.

Perhaps one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time is Ray Bradbury. He was able to look at so many different fantastical things from so many different fantastical angles. Many credit his novel Fahrenheit 451 has his greatest work. It is a book that depicts a future where learning is oppressed and conformity is expected. Government rules with no one ever questioning it. The masses are swayed by what the government wants them to see through television and pills. This adaptation of Bradbury's novel by French auteur Francois Truffault is effective in retaining the heart of Bradbury's work. Oskar Werner plays Guy Montag, a fireman who burns books rather than puts fires out. He is an expert in his field. He can find all the neat, out-of-the-way places people hide their books like in toasters or behind TV picture tubes. Books are outlawed as seen as corrupting forces in society. Only picture books are allowed. Montag goes on with his mundane life with his wife who is always watching television. The status of one is determined by how many TVs you have in the house. Montag doesn't like TV and has an undeniable quench for something more. Anyway, he meets a neighbor like him in spirit and soon decides to start reading. I loved this film because its message is so very clear today and so scary as we live in a society very different from Montag's yet not so far away. TV dominates our lives to some degree. Most of our news comes from it. Much of our bias comes from it. It is definitely a defining instrument in our lives whether or not we wish to admit it. Reading some argue is in a massive decline and our standards as a society certainly have much lower expectations as to what people should know. If you doubt this, just look at a show from the 1960s(even a show like Bewitched or Gilligan's Island) and compare the vocabulary to something made for a similarly aged viewing audience. We dumb down everything. Anyway enough sermonizing, Farenheit 451 will get your mind thinking. Truffault creates plenty of suspense and a wonderfully eerie new future. His use of color in particular really impressed me. It is of course the 60s, but he makes his world look very different. The acting is very good. Werner gives a more than competent performance as a man troubled with a life he finds to be false. Julie Christie excels playing BOTH Werner's wife and the neighbor girl that inspires him to find the true self. I also enjoyed a rare turn by crusty Cyril Cusak! This is indeed an underrated science fiction film and more importantly a film that should be explored as we move closer and closer to that society it showcases. Fortunately for all of us here, we understand the power, the joy, the fulfillment that reading and writing bring us each day. One last note(or two): this was Truffault's first film in English(may be his only one?) and the ending was wonderfully done!

The Firemen take the knowledge, they won't permit, those with power make the rules, it's their remit, books are burned and turned to ash, as sparking kerosene arcs flash, if you're caught with contraband, they will commit. Montag works the fire, erasing texts, since meeting Clarisse he's increasingly perplexed, she's opened up a door, that's taken him to hidden floors, now he knows the flames he throws are all pretext.

It's not the greatest piece of filmmaking you've ever seen, and you can pull a wagon through some of the holes in the logic, but for its time, and as an example of how the few can control the many, it's still worth an exploration to benchmark where the world is all these years later.