This film first appeared in theaters in 1966. The Vietnam War was just getting under way. The Pentagon was beefing up its disinformation campaign that was later documented in David Halberstam's book The Best and the Brightest. The film is based on a novel by Ray Bradbury, first published in 1953, when the hysterical Red Scares of McCarthyism were near their peak.
Bradbury's writing was originally published in the second issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine. In an interview, Bradbury claims that Fahrenheit 451 was his only work of science fiction.
That the "New Wave" director, Francois Truffaut agreed to direct the film was unusual. Bradbury was already an established writer, who probably wanted some artistic control, but Truffaut was promoting the auteur theory of film in which the director has absolute artistic control.
The friction had a couple of effects on the film. Truffaut, eager to begin filming wrote the screenplay before fully mastering English. Even Truffaut was disappointed in the end with the stiff, flat dialog. For Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451 was his first, and last, English-language film. This may have contributed to the flatness of the characters.
Some reviewers made an asset out of the stiffness by saying that the characters, deprived of serious thinking, and of books, and addled by drugs, were themselves, in fact, flat, soulless creatures.
The central character, Guy Montag, (Oskar Werner) is a "fireman." In this disturbing vision of the future, firemen burn books. Books are all but banned by the government because they have "conflicting ideas" in them. Those ideas can make people unhappy. It is the government's job to keep people happy, with drugs, large-screen television, and other entertainment.
Let's keep it positive.
The novel played on the concerns of the time when it was written. Censorship and suppression of thought, mainly through intimidation, was being exercised in the United States. The intimidation was being done by radio and newspaper columnists, who supported Senator Joe McCarthy. The book burnings by Nazis, which started in Germany in 1933 and continued until the end of World War II, were still in living memory. And the world was still reeling from the horrible pictures of the explosions of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as implications of the mass production of nuclear weapons.
By the time the film appeared, America was more concerned with race riots. So, burning was a viscerally powerful theme. Lost on most viewers in 1966 was the detail that among the burned books was the film journal Cahiers du Cinema for which Truffaut wrote, and that on the magazine's cover was a picture from the film Breathless, written by Truffaut. Also among the burned books: The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, both written by Bradbury.
SPOILER ALERT Truffaut, however, contributed much to the uniqueness of the film as a work of art separate from the book. From the opening credits, which were spoken and not displayed on the screen, to the ending, in which the exiles who have devoted their lives to memorizing books recite their books while walking blissfully in the snow, Truffaut's genius is there.
Also a stroke of genius was the casting of Julie Christie as Monag's drug-addled wife, and as the more compassionate and interested Clarisse, who seduces him into reading and thinking.
Like Brave New World, a book by Aldous Huxley, Fahrenheit 451 describes a hedonist world, where the people need not think.
If you like Fahrenheit 451, you might also like the 1956 animated film version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, now available on DVD.
Bradbury's writing was originally published in the second issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine. In an interview, Bradbury claims that Fahrenheit 451 was his only work of science fiction.
That the "New Wave" director, Francois Truffaut agreed to direct the film was unusual. Bradbury was already an established writer, who probably wanted some artistic control, but Truffaut was promoting the auteur theory of film in which the director has absolute artistic control.
The friction had a couple of effects on the film. Truffaut, eager to begin filming wrote the screenplay before fully mastering English. Even Truffaut was disappointed in the end with the stiff, flat dialog. For Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451 was his first, and last, English-language film. This may have contributed to the flatness of the characters.
Some reviewers made an asset out of the stiffness by saying that the characters, deprived of serious thinking, and of books, and addled by drugs, were themselves, in fact, flat, soulless creatures.
The central character, Guy Montag, (Oskar Werner) is a "fireman." In this disturbing vision of the future, firemen burn books. Books are all but banned by the government because they have "conflicting ideas" in them. Those ideas can make people unhappy. It is the government's job to keep people happy, with drugs, large-screen television, and other entertainment.
Let's keep it positive.
The novel played on the concerns of the time when it was written. Censorship and suppression of thought, mainly through intimidation, was being exercised in the United States. The intimidation was being done by radio and newspaper columnists, who supported Senator Joe McCarthy. The book burnings by Nazis, which started in Germany in 1933 and continued until the end of World War II, were still in living memory. And the world was still reeling from the horrible pictures of the explosions of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as implications of the mass production of nuclear weapons.
By the time the film appeared, America was more concerned with race riots. So, burning was a viscerally powerful theme. Lost on most viewers in 1966 was the detail that among the burned books was the film journal Cahiers du Cinema for which Truffaut wrote, and that on the magazine's cover was a picture from the film Breathless, written by Truffaut. Also among the burned books: The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, both written by Bradbury.
SPOILER ALERT Truffaut, however, contributed much to the uniqueness of the film as a work of art separate from the book. From the opening credits, which were spoken and not displayed on the screen, to the ending, in which the exiles who have devoted their lives to memorizing books recite their books while walking blissfully in the snow, Truffaut's genius is there.
Also a stroke of genius was the casting of Julie Christie as Monag's drug-addled wife, and as the more compassionate and interested Clarisse, who seduces him into reading and thinking.
Like Brave New World, a book by Aldous Huxley, Fahrenheit 451 describes a hedonist world, where the people need not think.
If you like Fahrenheit 451, you might also like the 1956 animated film version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, now available on DVD.