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| FAHRENHEIT 451 |
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| 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
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| 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. |
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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.”.
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| © |
English
version by Vince Mattaliano |
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