Product Description: A fireman of the future burns books until he meets a book lover and becomes an outlaw. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 01/27/2009 Starring: Cyril Cusack Ann Bell Run time: 113 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Francois Truffaut
Amazon.com essential video: The classic science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury was a curious choice for one of the leading directors of the French New Wave, François Truffaut. But from the opening credits onward (spoken, not written on screen), Truffaut takes Bradbury's fascinating premise and makes it his own. The futuristic society depicted in Fahrenheit 451 is a culture without books. Firemen still race around in red trucks and wear helmets, but their job is to start fires: they ferret out forbidden stashes of books, douse them with gasoline, and make public bonfires. Oskar Werner, the star of Truffaut's Jules and Jim, plays a fireman named Montag, whose exposure to David Copperfield wakens an instinct toward reading and individual thought. (That's why books are banned--they give people too many ideas.) In an intriguing casting flourish, Julie Christie plays two roles: Montag's bored, drugged-up wife and the woman who helps kindle the spark of rebellion. The great Bernard Herrmann wrote the hard-driving music; Nicolas Roeg provided the cinematography. Fahrenheit 451 received a cool critical reception and has never quite been accepted by Truffaut fans or sci-fi buffs. Its deliberately listless manner has always been a problem, although that is part of its point; the lack of reading has made people dry and empty. If the movie is a bit stiff (Truffaut did not speak English well and never tried another project in English), it nevertheless is full of intriguing touches, and the ending is lyrical and haunting. --Robert Horton
The best movie ever made This is the best campy 60's science fiction movie ever made. The DVD is full of extra's including a great behind the scenes commentary. You won't be disappointed.
You are better off reading the book "Fahrenheit 451" would be an ok movie if it was not based on such a good book. The movie, based on a book by Ray Bradbury with the same name, is about a world in which reading is not permitted, books are all banned, people are engulfed by their TVs (not that far-fetched anymore huh?!) and firemen start fires.
Montag is a fireman and has been living the life he is expected to life, carrying out the job he is expected to perform and conforming nicely to a society that controls, bans and censors. His life is turned upside down when he meets Clarisse and he is compelled to read a book. The book deals with conformity, television and the complete absorption into technology.
The movie also shows, although not as well as the book, the damage this has done to human relationships. The movie is ok but it is missing two vital parts: Faber and the mechanic dog. You are better off reading the book.
Hard to stay interested in this one I am having a hard time rating this movie. It's not that the movie was bad, but it did absolutely nothing for me watching it. As a matter of fact it bored me. Fahrenheit 451 had no action, it wasn't particularly thought provoking, it hardly had anything to make it even look or feel like a science fiction movie. It might have came from one of Ray Bradbury's most popular stories, but the movie version just didn't do much.
If you are into action you can forget it. There is no action in this movie. I am not kidding. The most action you see is a strange looking fire truck driving around or maybe someone defying gravity by sliding UP a pole. As a matter of fact even if you are not a big action fan this movie will likely bore you to tears. I don't know how else to describe it. I had a very hard time sitting down and actually watching this movie. You can forget looking for any cool tech in this movie. About the only thing I saw that was remotely interesting was a tiny scene where people were using rocket packs to fly around. Too little too late if you ask me.
Usually when a movie doesn't have any action it has a good plot or story to keep the brain juices flowing. Well... it didn't. As a matter of fact I think the whole concept of a society without books happens to be impossible. I mean how could a society with all of its laws, structure and knowledge possibly exist if that knowledge isn't written down so the next guy can learn it? I know this is one of Bradbury's 'what if' stories, but it certainly doesn't translate well to film. Even in spite of that Fahrenheit 451 doesn't really hit the mark as a thinking person's movie. With all of its bad stuff I do admit the acting is good and the movie is very stylish for its time.
Ultimately I can't recommend this movie. I couldn't even sit through it without stopping the movie several times to take a break from it. The sad thing is the movie has good cinematography and great acting. All of the basic ingredients are there but it just doesn't mix right. I suppose some of you might really like it and there are scenes that had me watching with open eyes. However I can't recommend this movie in its current state.
An inspiring tale of hope! Don't touch me, reader!
In this film, Montag, is an up and comer at the local fire-station where books are burned. He has a beautiful wife and a promotion coming up. But he starts to read books and his life falls apart! He becomes anti-social, ruins his marriage, and ruins his career! In this movie there are people that memorize books in order to keep them alive even after they're burned. If I was going to do this I would be sure to memorize the book this was written as to make sure man remembers how dangerous they are! This movie then makes its most important point: all books contradict themselves therefore none of them can be right!
I hate to read so the idea of a world without books is quite intriguing. Let's face it, books are obsolete now anyways. We have pictures and sound and colours! More colours than you can shake a stick at. We have 8 news networks that give us the news! We have movies and TV. Case in point, this movie! It would take hours and hours spread out over days to read this book, but I finished this movie in an hour and a half! It's the same story so tell me in which way the book would trump the movie? If film is so much more efficient than books, why do we still have them? Efficiency is what our society is about.
Think about it, a book is just words on a page. We don't get to see any of the places or people they contain.
People often equate literacy with intelligence which is mad. If a person watches a documentary about the Roman Empire they will learn all about it in an hour or two. Have you ever seen the book, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire? It's thousands of pages spread out over several books! It would take years to finish it. Therefore, it will take a reader years to learn about Rome while a non-reader will know all about it in a couple hours. Let's say it takes the reader 2 years to read about Rome, the non-reader can watch a documentary a day after work or school and learn about 730 subjects by the time the reader has finished with Rome!!!!!!!! Therefore a watcher is exponentially more intelligent than a reader.
The argument this movie makes about books is quite intriguing especially considering our age of terrorism. People read books and they put bad thoughts into their heads; many people have been killed because of certain books, why shouldn't we burn them? There have been so many books that have caused problems throughout the ages, if we could burn every copy of them the world will be safer, more peaceful place! There are fairy stories meant to stir up hatred towards science, and as for science books, they are wonderful, but obsolete now that we have the Discovery channel. There are Novels which are lies, they are filled with people and places that never existed, or things that never happened in places that do exist.
People read books and get depressed; they miss out on time that could be spent with their friends, or at social activities. If you read books and don't watch TV you will be a social misfit. You won't have anything to talk about because you will not know who won American Idol, or who got kicked off the island. TV gives you news as it is happening; newspapers give you the news after it's happened. Therefore, newspapers are obsolete by the time they are printed. I'm not saying books were always bad, they're just obsolete now. Why use ancient technology like the written word? We wouldn't use records now that there are CDs, or VHS tapes now that we have DVD would we?
I think the fact that the author wrote this as a book first and then had the movie made was a stroke of genius. It merely proves the point he was trying to make, moving pictures are vastly superior to words on a page.
Books are about the past, what's already happened. Moving pictures are about the present the future, what we will become not what we have been.
Habent sua fata libelli.
The Future Is Now? With "Fahrenheit 451" the brilliant French director Francois Truffaut made his first film in color and his only on in English. Based on the science fiction classic by Ray Bradbury, it takes place in the future where a totalitarian government is in place. People are forbidden to read. Houses have huge television screens installed in the walls; the inhabitants of this negative utopia take pills to stay on an even keel. Firemen no longer put out fires but rather burn books because they make people think, make them unhappy and, as one character says, "we above all have got to be alike." The film stars Oskar Werner as Montag, a fireman who hides books in his home and secretly reads among other novels Charles Dickens' DAVID COPPERFIELD, and Julie Christie who plays two characters, Montag's wife Linda and another secret reader Clarisse.
The cinematography is beautiful, particularly the opening scenes with frame after frame shot in different colors of the roofs of houses with huge television antennas. There are no written credits at the beginning of the movie; a man's voice tells the viewer the stars of the movie, the producer, the director et al. The characters read comic strips with no captions. The title of course comes from the temperature that supposedly book paper burns.
According to the commentary that accompanies the DVD version of this film about the making of "Fahrenheit 451" Truffaut used some of his favorite books for the burning scenes: MOBY DICK, Bradbury's THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, ROBINSON CRUSOE, MADAM BOVARY, VANITY FAIR, OTHELLO, LOLITA, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, works by Jean Genet, Frank Harris, Kafka, Henry Miller and many others-- and a cook of crossword puzzles in Spanish!
It hardly bears saying that this film is as timely as both local and world news, past and present. Everyone knows that both the Soviets and Hitler burned books. Churches and other institutions, the so-called keepers of morals, along with private citizens in these United States, have led fights to ban books from schools and libraries over the years. Right now a citizen of Gwinnett County, Georgia is trying to get the Harry Potter novels removed from that county's schools. Furthermore, a recent study showed that one out of five Americans-- I believe-- had not read a single book in the past year. The average family, on the other hand, watches dozens of hours of TV drivel each week while many Americans take tranquilizers and other mood-altering prescription drugs on a daily basis.
This fine movie deserves a much-needed revival in these times.
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