Fahrenheit 451
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.93 You Save: $6.05 (47%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.92 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Fahrenheit 451
Movie Review: The best movie ever made
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Movie Review: classic thinker's Sci Fi
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the classic science fiction movies that encourages thought in the viewer. Anyone interested in societal problems would be interested in this movieMovie Review: A great classic
Summary: 5 Stars
A great classic that is pretty faithful for the book. The cinematography is superb and the overall DVD image and sound quality is superb.
Movie Review: Another classic....
Summary: 4 Stars
From the late sixties, a time when important movies were being made hand over fist. This was the era that produced movies like "2001", "A Thousand Clowns", "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold", "Last Summer", "Planet of the Apes", "Yellow Submarine", "Romeo & Juliet", "The Producers" and many others....
"Fahrenheit 451" was one of the SOCIALLY important films of the era. In fact, I still have a hard time thinking of this as a Francois Truffaut movie! This was not standard Truffaut...Truffaut's films were almost always "slice of life" vignettes, like "Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me" or "Jules et Jim"..."Fahrenheit" actually seemed like an effort by Truffaut to produce a Jean Luc Goddard film, since Goddard was pretty much marketed as the "social conscience" of the French new wave.
The dead giveaway that it's an "important" movie? The presence of Oskar Werner, Julie Christie and Cyril Cusack! Werner's presence in ANY movie of the time was an obvious indication of the director's intent on being "heard". I don't think Werner, who died in 1984, was in one completely "frivolous" movie in his entire career! This was the man that was in "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold", "Ship Of Fools", "The Shoes of the Fisherman", a biography of Mozart and "Jules et Jim"....a nice resume if you're going for cinematic street cred. Julie Christie was supposedly Miss "Important Actress" of the time....something I've always missed for some reason...she's cute, but has almost ZERO screen charisma and isn't that fantastic an actress, but she, also, was in a slew of "important" films, like "Dr Zhivago", "Darling and "Petulia", as well as this one. The late Cyril Cusack, also from "Spy" with Werner from 1966, had had a long and varied career, both in plays and movies, and despite his veddy British ways, was Irish. Add to this a British cast of supernumeraries, and we have a ready-made, existential-sociological sci-fi movie for the espresso-and-wine set.
The plot involves Werner, playing a character named Guy Montag, working for a dystopic government of the near-future, burning books to keep the populace from "becoming unhappy with their lot". Newspapers are even text-free, consisting of nothing but comic strip-style pictures with no dialogue balloons. Cyril Cusack plays his imperious immediate supervisor, whose name is never mentioned. Julie Christie has a duel role, that of Montag's drugged out, bubble-headed, conformist wife....and a perky, non-conformist schoolteacher who is secretly a "bookperson", or somebody defying the law of the land that forbids the reading of books. The differentiation is made with very different haircuts for the two women, and it actually works. Montag is due for a promotion in all this after ten years of service as a "fireman".
On the way home one day, however, Montag meets the schoolteacher, Clarisse, on his monorail commute, and they strike up a conversation. He's immediately taken with her resemblance to his wife, Linda, and tells her so. She notes his profession, since he has commuted partially in uniform, and asks him: "Do you ever read the books you burn?" He says no, but that question sticks in his mind and he eventually does become curious as to what their hold is. After noting how empty his wife has become as a conformer, eventually, his friendship with Clarisse begins to blossom. He starts reading books, and he rather boldly, if not naively, reveals this to his wife.
Eventually, the feckless little so-and-so rats him out and he has to run to his new friend Clarisse and her community of book-memorizers who live on the outskirts of the city this all takes place in, (another thing that is never revealed is the name of the city.) Montag meets people who don't use their real names, but go by the name of the books they have committed to memory. He meets an adorable young woman who states, perkily, that she is "Jean-Paul Sartre's 'The Jewish Question' Delighted to meet you!" and right after her comes her boyfriend: "I'm 'The Martian Chronicles' by Ray Bradbury..." The story that "Fahrenheit 451" is based on was, in fact, written by Ray Bradbury as well...
This film, as old as it is, still plays well in this day and age, and still has about 80% of the impact it did when it was current. The DVD has the usual extras, like Ray Bradbury's own discussion of the writing of the novel the film is based on, a commentary on the making of the film, the original distaff intro to the film and a poster gallery, (mostly focusing on Ms. Christie!)
Nostalgic for one of those neat, semi-obscure films they made when the entire cinematic world was on a roll? I couldn't recommend this standout Truffaut-trying-to-be-Goddard film more...
(And you'll have some idea why I question the wisdom of him being in "Close Encounters of the Third KInd", a movie made by a much lesser director, even for the short time he's in it!)
Movie Review: To Burn Books or to Read Books? That is the Question!
Summary: 4 Stars
+++++
This movie, based on the 1953 novel of the same title by Ray Bradbury (born 1920), is set in a world where reading is forbidden, books and any printed material are burned and, as well, critical thought is discouraged. The movie's title refers to the ignition temperature of paper. (The ignition temperature is the temperature at which something catches fire and burns on its own.) For paper, as the movie's protagonist Montag (Oskar Werner) tells us, is 451 degrees Fahrenheit (or 233 degrees Celsius).
Montag works at fire station #451. The motto of the station is "We burn [books] to ashes and then burn the ashes." He tells us his routine as a "fireman:"
"On Monday we burn [books by] Miller, Tuesday Tolstoy, Wednesday Walt Whitman, Friday Faulkner, and Saturday & Sunday Schopenhauer and Sartre."
Julie Christie is in a dual role as Montag's pleasure-seeking conformist wife, Linda (Christie with long hair), and his rebellious, book-collecting schoolteacher friend Clarisse (Christie with short hair). Some people, especially those not familiar with the novel, might fine this duality confusing.
It's when the regimented, obedient Montag meets this revolutionary schoolteacher who dares to break the law and read that Montag's problems begin. He eventually begins collecting books by stealing them and reads them instead of burning them. Suddenly, he finds himself a hunted fugitive, forced to choose not only between two women but between personal safety and intellectual freedom.
Cyril Cusack as the fire station captain also gives a fine performance. He has no regrets in burning books. His reasoning:
"We've all got to be alike. The only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal."
The very beginning of this movie is interesting. Instead of having the credits printed on the screen, they are read in keeping with the idea of no printed material.
The movie itself seems at first to be slow-paced and listless. This is the point. The people as a consequence of not reading are dull and empty.
There's only one scene that has special effects that seems out of place by today's standards. But this movie was made almost forty years ago (from the year of this review) when special effects technology was still in its infancy so this can't be held against the movie.
I thought the ending was very interesting. It offers hope for a better future.
The background music is exceptional. It adds to each scene.
This is what the author of the novel, Ray Bradbury, said about this movie (taken from "A Conversation with Ray Bradbury" found in "Fahrenheit 451: The 50TH Anniversary Edition"):
"The movie [directed by Francois Truffaut] was a mixed blessing. It didn't follow the novel as completely as it should have. It's a good movie; it has a wonderful ending; it has a great [musical background] score by Bernard Hermann; Oskar Werner [as Montag] is wonderful in the lead. But Truffaut made the mistake of putting Julie Christie in two roles [as Montag's long-haired wife and his short-haired friend] in the same [movie], which was very confusing [to some people], and he eliminated some of the other characters...Faber the philosopher [a central character to the novel] and the Mechanical Hound [that hunts down people who break the law by reading]. I mean you can't do without those!"
Bradbury continues:
"They're going to make a new version [of my novel] sometime in the next year [2004]. Mel Gibson will produce it, and Frank Darabont will direct it: he did 'The Shawshank Redemption'...I'm looking forward to [seeing this new version]."
I still felt that this movie was quite good despite the missing elements Bradbury mentions.
Finally, the DVD has good picture and sound quality. There are six extras, all interesting.
In conclusion, this is a thought-provoking movie based on a science fiction masterpiece. After viewing it, I could understand why it made the top 100 science fiction movies of all time!!
(1966; 110 min; widescreen; closed captioned; color)
**** 1/2
+++++