FAHRENHEIT 451
Italian Title: FAHRENHEIT 451
Production: 1966 - UK, Rank, col., 112 min.
Director: François Truffaut
Screenplay: François Truffaut and Jean-Louis Richard, from Ray Bradbury novel of the same name
Special Effects: Les Bowie
Music: Bernard Herrmann
Cast: Oskar Werner, Julie Christie, Anton Diffring, Cyril Cusack, Alex Scott, Bee Duffel, Jeremy Spenser, Anne Bell
Guy Montag (Oskar Werner) is a fireman, or more accurately, a member of the “fire police.” But the job of firemen in 2052 isn’t to put out fires, but to set them, under the rule of an authoritarian and despotic government that tries to keep itself in power by canceling freedom of speech and expression, the sources of progress. Firemen are assigned the duty of discovering and burning books (451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which book paper burns). Montag does his job diligently burning books – and sometimes people – until he decides to read one of the books. Struck by that discovery, he proceeds to read one book after another, and his terrified wife Linda (Julie Christie) denounces him. Aided by his neighbor Clarisse (also played by Julie Christie), Montag flees to “the City of the Books,” a secret camp where a group of other refugees have become “living books” each of whom as agreed to commit one book to memory as a record, until the end of this era. Montag becomes part of this secret group and remains there with his neighbor.

For the final scene of the movie, he cut his hair purposely to create a continuity error, because he disliked the director François Truffaut. Ironically, Werner died only two days after the death of Truffaut, who had previously directed him in Jules et Jim (1962).

Julie Christie returned to science fiction in the 1977 production of “Demon Seed” (also known as Proteus Generation). In the same year, Truffaut appeared on screen as well, in Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”.

© English version by Vince Mattaliano   
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