fahrenheit 451 movie review 1966

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

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Movies, tv & music • independent film criticism • soundtrack guides • forming the future • est. 2014, threatened individualism: on françois truffaut’s ‘fahrenheit 451’.

Fahrenheit 451 is a sociopolitical satire, based on Ray Bradbury’s 1953 book of the same title. Characteristic of a French New Wave director, François Truffaut provokes the film’s audience into self-reflection. He presents a variety of threats to individualism and creativity in the turbulent 60s: authoritarian states; the increasing prevalence of television and mass media; the impact of modernistic art and architecture. Truffaut strategically weaves together the elements of setting, cinematography, pop culture and biblical symbolism to rebel against any force which threatens individualism.

Together with Jean-Louis Richard, Truffaut wrote Fahrenheit 451’s  screenplay about the evolution of Guy Montag (Oskar Werner), a fireman who dutifully hunts for and burn books on behalf of a government which has deemed books a social vice , leading to inequality and unhappiness. By ridding society of books, Montag and his fellow firemen extinguish the flames of independent and creative thought. Yet, when a book-loving schoolteacher, Clarisse ( Julie Christie ) questions Montag’s profession and his satisfaction with it, she awakens Montag’s curiosity and rational thought. He rebels against authorities, starts reading books and evolves into a thinking person. Montag falls out of love with his empty-headed, TV-addicted, pill-popping wife, Linda (also Julie Christie). The intellectual stimulation that Montag elicits from reading transcends into a shared cult-like obsession with books. In the end, Montag escapes to a wilderness of book lovers who memorize novels for posterity, with the hope of one day being free to reprint them. He does so after his wife leaves him and his own fire department squad destroys his home and books. It is unclear whether Montag will achieve happiness .

At the start of Fahrenheit 451 , Truffaut presents a montage of TV antennas emblazoned against bold color backgrounds. This may be likened to Andy Warhol’s “Marilyn Diptych” (1962), an emotionless presentation of many color and black and white variations of a Marilyn Monroe photograph. The original image of this manufactured star was made for mass reproduction. In Fahrenheit 451, this aesthetic feature sets the stage for Truffaut’s commentary on the superficial nature of society . As pop art grew in popularity, it detracted attention from the masterpieces of the ages which reflect the unique vision and inspiration of each classic art master. It is, therefore, fitting for Truffaut to allude to pop art as he presents the rise of television pulling people away from classic books containing the philosophies, aspirations and innermost thoughts of history’s greatest minds. He correlates pop art and television as threats to individualism, freedom of thought and creativity.

Establishing a repetitive, mechanistic tone and texture, modernist architecture fills virtually every frame of Fahrenheit 451 . The sterile setting drives a sense of bland conformity. This is reminiscent of Le Corbusier who regarded houses as machines for living ( Towards a New Architecture, 1923) . Cinematographer Nicolas Roeg shoots Montag’s neighborhood block of identical houses from side angles yielding an infinite mirror effect. The house interiors have only the bare essentials for food and sleep, with minimal kitchens. There are no town squares outside the linear corridors that go from one block to the next . The absence of a city center lessens opportunity for communication and the spark of creativity. The city setting conveys a sense of forced equality and assimilation.

As television replaces reading in the lives of Fahrenheit 451’s characters, it spews out the naïve vacuous pabulum also found in today’s reality show programming. Linda expresses to Montag how wonderful it is that she has been chosen for an appearance on a popular TV show, “Family,” and invites him to share in her excited speculation as to whether she could become an actress. Montag is far less gullible as he responds, “Oh, Linda. They must have phoned all of the 200,000 Lindas in the whole country.” Unlike the rest of the 60s characters, Montag has a sense of reality as expressed by Andrew Oldham in Why I Hate the Sixties (2004). Oldham affirms it is possible to go to a party and pick out any random person and make him or her a star. Truffaut’s attack on TV culminates when Montag is stunned to view his own mock execution broadcast live to the nation. A fellow book person explains to Montag, “They can’t keep the viewers waiting much longer… the show must go on… anybody will do to provide them with their climax.” With  Fahrenheit 451’s ending that falls short of “happily ever after,” Truffaut revokes television’s propensity or duty to succinctly tie up loose ends.

Throughout both the foreground and background of Fahrenheit 451 , Truffaut emphasizes the characters’ self-absorption via a hyper-sexual form of narcissism in a society lacking real love . In the course of his daily commute, Montag witnesses fellow passengers kissing their own reflections in the window , embracing their bodies and touching their legs. Even Linda, his wife, is shown to be fondling her breasts, while looking directly at a mirror . This is a sign she is unfulfilled in a quest for never ending satisfaction. During Montag and Linda’s rather mechanistic love-making, a melancholic Bernard Hermann score plays similar to the score of Vertigo (1958) when Scottie attempts to artificially create the perfect woman. This music is a discrete clue that there is no real substance behind these acts of love .

Montag’s life and career is a progression of empty acts before he starts to read. Truffaut emphasizes this linearity through the cinematic effect of mass ornament. Examples include the firemen sliding down the fire poll, getting on and off the fire truck in unison and then parading in their pursuit of the enemy, books. This robotic nature is also enhanced by Bernard Hermann’s score. The music is always in sync with the firemen’s movements, with a sense of factory assembly line repetition, like that found in Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse” (1937). During each book destruction, the men go into a wild frenzy. Similarly, modernist architects and developers of the 60s were excited to evict long-standing residents of older, sentimental homes, in order to demolish them and erect sterile high-rises.

Repetitive linearity continues as Montag spends every day riding the monorail, going to and from work on the same linear track , with a blank expression on his face. Roeg effectively uses POV shots to help create a sense of linear tunnel vision, with characters never viewing their surroundings or thinking outside the box. A tunnel POV shot shows Montag escorting Clarisse to school . The hallways are extremely tight. As Clarisse encounters one the students , the child treats her like an intruder and looks for another teacher. Soon after, a comparison scene occurs in which Montag wife’s, Linda, is walking down her household corridor in a linear POV shot . Linda encounters Montag reading books and immediately reacts with alarm. This demonstrates society’s intolerance for anything off the rails.

Truffaut also incorporates biblical symbolism to tell his tale. During a book raid, when a fireman grabs an apple from the kitchen table of an invaded house, Captain Beatty knocks the apple from his subordinate’s mouth as he takes a bite. It is as if the fireman is taking a bite of the apple of knowledge of good and evil from the Garden of Eden. Captain Beatty rejects any pursuit of knowledge. In contrast, in the land of the book people, a man freely takes repeated bites of a juicy apple . Another biblical reference is the crossing of the river to enter the land of the book people. Those who pursue books, and knowledge, are reborn and saved, as if they experience a baptismal cleansing of new birth in a river .

Yet, even upon Montag’s arrival at this book lover’s paradise , there is still a sense of melancholy which lingers over the final scenes. Linearity reappears in Montag’s life. Everyone is shown moving from the left and right of the frame, wandering back and forth, rehearsing and retelling books. The book people forgo their own individuality, not even retaining their own names. Viewers may conclude that it isn’t books or the eradication of books that is problematic, nor even pop art or modernist architecture. Rather, viewers may be inspired to look at their own lives and evaluate whether they are able to be creative and freely express themselves.

Peter Bell ( @PeterGBell25 ) is a 2016 Master of Arts – Film Studies graduate of Columbia University School of Arts in New York City. His interests include film history, film theory and film criticism. Ever since watching  TCM  as a child, Peter has had a passion for film, always trying to add greater context to film for others. His favorite films include Chinatown, Blade Runner, Lawrence of Arabia, A Shot in the Dark and Inception.  Peter believes movie theaters are still the optimal forum for film viewing, discussion and discovering fresh perspectives on culture.

Categories: 1960s , 2019 Film Essays , Drama , Featured , Film Essays , Science Fiction

Tagged as: Drama , Fahrenheit 451 , François Truffaut , Peter Bell , Science Fiction

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Fahrenheit 451.

Directed by François Truffaut

What if you had no right to read?

In the future, the government maintains control of public opinion by outlawing literature and maintaining a group of enforcers, known as “firemen,” to perform the necessary book burnings. Fireman Montag begins to question the morality of his vocation…

Julie Christie Oskar Werner Cyril Cusack Anton Diffring Jeremy Spenser Bee Duffell Alex Scott Gillian Aldam Michael Balfour Ann Bell Yvonne Blake Arthur Cox Frank Cox Fred Cox Noel Davis Judith Drinan Kevin Eldon Alan Ford Joan Francis Denis Gilmore David Glover Tina Hart Arthur Haynes Caroline Hunt Edward Kaye Mark Lester Gillian Lewis Eric Mason Charlie McFadden Show All… Roma Milne Michael Mundell Anna Palk Donald Pickering John Rae Terry Sartain Arnold Schulkes Reg Thomason Tom Watson Chris William Earl Younger

Director Director

François Truffaut

Producers Producers

Lewis M. Allen Mickey Delamar Jane C. Nusbaum Ian Lewis

Writers Writers

François Truffaut Jean-Louis Richard

Original Writer Original Writer

Ray Bradbury

Casting Casting

Miriam Brickman

Editor Editor

Cinematography cinematography.

Nicolas Roeg

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Bryan Coates Suzanne Schiffman

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Camera operator camera operator.

Alex Thomson

Production Design Production Design

Tony Walton Syd Cain

Art Direction Art Direction

Syd Cain Yvonne Blake Ron Benton

Special Effects Special Effects

Charles Staffell Les Bowie

Stunts Stunts

Bob Woodham

Composer Composer

Bernard Herrmann

Sound Sound

Robert T. MacPhee Gordon K. McCallum Norman Wanstall Otto Snel

Costume Design Costume Design

Tony Walton

Makeup Makeup

Basil Newall

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Joyce James

Anglo Enterprises Vineyard Film

Releases by Date

Theatrical limited, 07 sep 1966, 19 mar 1969, 07 oct 2001, 18 oct 2006, 16 sep 1966, 17 sep 1966, 02 nov 1966, 14 nov 1966, 23 nov 1966, 02 dec 1966, 23 dec 1966, 26 dec 1966, 29 dec 1966, 23 feb 1967, 18 oct 1967, 23 oct 1967, 23 nov 1967, 20 dec 1967, 29 dec 1967, 01 mar 1968, 01 jun 1968, 14 aug 1969, 28 jan 1972, 19 jun 2002, 17 sep 2009, 30 jun 2000, 01 jan 1992, 01 jan 2014, releases by country.

• Theatrical K-12
• Theatrical U
• Theatrical U re-release
• Theatrical 12
• Theatrical limited Panorama of European Cinema
• Theatrical re-release
• Theatrical limited T Venice Film Festival
• Theatrical T

Netherlands

• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical limited 16 Cinétol Science-Fiction Festival
• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical limited Warsaw Film Festival
• Physical DVD premiere
• Theatrical 12 Madrid
• Theatrical 12 Barcelona
• Digital APTA Filmoteca Española
• Theatrical NR New York City, New York
• Theatrical NR
• Physical NR MCA/Universal Home Video #80199 [𝐕𝐇𝐒📼] 𝟭𝟭𝟮 mínutєѕ

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Popular reviews

Review by theriverjordan ★★ 25

The best that can be said about François Truffaut’s first English-language film, is that it is, also, his last English-language film. 

The director’s experience of adapting the iconic Ray Bradbury book was so hellish, it turned Truffaut off ever making a film external to France again. Cardinal Richelieu must have been a secret producer. 

Coming off a string of iconic hits, including “400 Blows” and “Jules and Jim,” “Fahrenheit” is one of the most sudden and inexplicable stumbles ever made by a major director. While Truffaut was no doubt heavily influenced by Hollywood icons such as Sirk and Hitchcock, he allowed himself to be eaten alive in his own most immediate encounter with non-French film. 

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly…

Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★ 6

The film quite frankly was not a success! Much of it due to the many obstacles and frustrations experienced by director François Truffaut! Everything from delays in filming, choice of actors, choice of country and language came back to bite him in the ass! Even the release of the 1965 Alphaville managed to suck the wind right out of his sails!

49 years later having gained classic status it seems to have done a complete about face and seems to be enjoying some mild success!

Now for Naughty's take:

Having just finished viewing the film I came across the poster for the film and about died laughing when I read these words "Aflame with the Excitement and Emotions of Tomorrow!…

Review by Aaron ★★★½ 12

“The only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal.”

It is a serene community. Low-slung houses, uniform of appearance, line the streets. Reed-like trees keep visibility at a maximum. Earth tones dominate the color palette, except for the occasional vermillion box with a blue light on top so as to catch the eye of would-be informants. Within these homes, bored civilians watch large flat-screen television sets from which talking heads issue assurances of social harmony. To and from work, one takes the train, taking care not to speak to fellow passengers. It all seems rather ordinary. Except that everyone is always stroking themselves and their clothing, an apparent epidemic of rather reserved heavy petting. The human…

Review by nora ★★★½ 4

i was so worried about this one, mainly because in his letters truffaut talks about wanting to make this film for five years (he signed on to direct this project in either 1960 or 1962 i think, then spent such a long time working on the script while financing for the project was happening in the background, that eventually he decided to take a break to write and direct THE SOFT SKIN because the adaptation part was so exhausting to him) and then after the production of this film, his letters just stop mentioning it. so to gain further context i've been reading the diary he wrote during production (english translations of the portions published in cahiers are linked in…

Review by rialore ★★★★

I’m currently hugging my entire library, if you’re asking

Review by feedingbrett ★★★★

Review In A Nutshell:

Fahrenheit 451 follows the story of a world where books are forbidden by law and firefighters are present to ensure they are perished via fire, and one firefighter starts to have second thoughts about his profession.

The first thing came into my mind when watching this film is the similarities this film has with A Clockwork Orange and Brazil, the similarities is found in its visual atmosphere, creating this dystopian environment, but what makes this film different from the two films I mentioned is its dystopia is found internally within its characters. The physical environment that these characters live in are actually close to home, aside from a couple of "improvements" like the wall screen. Truffaut…

Review by ♱ ★★★

I've got to read. I've got to catch up with the remembrance of the past.

Review by Justin Decloux ★★★★ 1

Like a lot of teenagers, I was obsessed with dystopian fiction ("I live a life filled with plenty, but I must constantly consume media where it is taken away!") and FAHRENHEIT 451 was always my favourite one: Short, punchy and about... *gasp* destroying books!

Also, there were Robot Dogs.

I saw this movie back during those teenage years and thought it was fine, but couldn't connect with its distinctly 60s style. Today, I love how frozen in time it is, and wouldn't fathom wanting to watch a 'gritty' version (Which I assume the new Michael B. Jordan version is?). All of the big beats are hit, and while Oskar Werner is a stiff protagonist, his opaqueness works within Truffaut's formalist execution. I especially enjoyed the film's finale because it moves beyond the "And then they rode on into the night!" dystopian trope to offer a wee bit of hope.

Sadly, the movie version features no Robot Dogs.

Review by gem ★★

i feel like even i could’ve done a better job at making this film adaptation

Review by Matteo ★★★½ 2

It is François Truffaut entering conventional and more commercially focused territory, yet it is conducted with the same subversive intellectualism and rebellious poetry so characteristic of his filmography. A strange confluence of European aesthetics not quite accurate in its colorful Technicolor sixties hodgepodge but eccentrically creative in its dystopian depiction, a futuristic world of illiterates where suppressing reading and burning books is the ''dignified'' job of the firemen. Truffaut sees in the rich literary quality of Fahrenheit 451 a space to symbolize the raging insurgency against authoritarianism and conformity, capturing much of the seditious character of the nouvelle vague and its oppositional force towards the cinematic status quo, and of course the political establishment as well. It is well known…

Review by Jimena ★★★½

Adaptación de la célebre novela de Bradbury sobre el totalitarismo analfabeta y la persecución ideológica, no puedo decir que el film haya envejecido con la elegancia de la historia que lo inspira pero guarda, aún así, cierto encanto. No es la pieza crucial de Truffaut ni posee su estética más memorable pero abre las puertas a abstracciones intelectuales y análisis de lo que damos por sentado, desbaratando la comodidad de nuestra realidad. La impasible quietud con que se desarrolla es desesperante y espeluznante a partes iguales, es un buen sentido.

Review by Lyncoln ★★★½

Unfortunately I've never had the chance to read the original Fahrenheit 451 book, so there's no way I can make a comparison with the film, but I believe from the bottom of my heart that the book must be much better. Fahrenheit 451 presents us with a world in which society banned people from reading books, claiming that it caused disturbances in their souls, and so firefighters now have a new function, instead of putting out fires, they cause fires by burning books. The dystopian society of Fahrenheit seems interesting, but it is poorly explored, because I am unable to have a parameter in relation to the book, I don't know if this fact matches the world of the book,…

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Fahrenheit 451 Reviews

Ultimately, the film has a powerful emotional impact, but it is achieved the hard way -- through the mind rather than the viscera -- and only in Its own good time.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2019

Truffaut brought more cinematic acumen to this minute-long sequence than many filmmakers deploy in an entire feature.

Full Review | Nov 29, 2018

It is as though Truffaut has drawn on everything he knows about cinema to express unshakable loyalty to the written word.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2018

Truffaut's movie clearly suffered from a troubled shoot - Truffaut didn't actually know English - so his oddball take on the material succeeds in only fits and bursts.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Sep 16, 2014

Even at the science-fiction horror-story level, the movie fails -- partly, I think, because Truffaut is too much of an artist to exploit the vulgar possibilities in the material.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2012

Bradbury's 1954 vision of a totalitarian society where technology is worshiped and books are burned has been neutered and consigned to camp.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 29, 2010

Truffaut faces Bradbury's abstractions head on, not as science-fiction but as humanistic fairy-tale

Full Review | Oct 26, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2008

On the downside, it doesn't particularly feel like a Truffaut film, but on the upside, it's a decent entry in the sci-fi genre.

Full Review | Jan 31, 2008

This 1966 film often looks good (it was Truffaut's first in color, photographed by Nicolas Roeg), but the ideas, such as they are, get lost in the meandering narrative.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2007

A marvelously courageous personal statement that becomes more fascinating with time.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 5, 2007

With a serious and even terrifying theme, this excursion into science fiction has been thoughtfully directed by Francois Truffaut and there is adequate evidence of light touches to bring welcome and needed relief to a sombre and scarifying subject.

An underrated film, perhaps because it is less science fiction than a tale of 'once upon a time.'

Full Review | Jan 26, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 18, 2005

While not one of Truffaut's strongest film, it is nonetheless one of his few explicitly political works and also boasts sharp imagery by Roeg) and indelible score by Herrmann.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 2, 2005

trgico constatar que a viso de Bradbury vem tornando-se cada vez mais real: a diferena que, em vez de queimados, os livros vm sendo simplesmente ignorados.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 17, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 14, 2005

A keen adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel by Truffaut; eerie in its simplicity and matter-of-factness about book burning and Big Brotherism.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 28, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 3, 2004

Ann Silverthorn

Fahrenheit 451: Comparing the 2018 Film to the 1966 Original

Sometimes I’m disappointed with movie remakes, but that’s not the case with Fahrenheit 451 . The theme of the first film, and the novel it was based on, is actually strengthened in the 2018 version. Both versions have just enough similarities and differences to make them both worth watching. I’d recommend reading the novel by Ray Bradbury first, and then viewing the movies in chronological order. You’ll find both versions of the film at DVD Netflix and the book at your local library. It’s a classic.

Fahrenheit 451  is a prophetic tale of what happens when we try to erase history, make everyone alike, and try not to offend anyone. Hmm. Sounds like where we’re headed in society today, doesn’t it?

At the most-basic level, in both films, books have been outlawed and when they’re found, most often through informant-initiated raids, “firemen” arrive on the scene to douse them with kerosene and destroy them with flame throwers. Guy Montag is the main character, a fireman with an impeccable reputation. The motivation behind Montag’s actions differs between the two versions, with the first being dissatisfaction and boredom with his own life leading to a desire to learn and the second being that of a man who has flashbacks of his father’s demise related to book burning.

Montag’s commanding officer, Captain Beatty, has been grooming him for advancement at the fire station. In the second film, Montag is not married as he is in the first, and the character of Clarise is a bit more edgy and complicated in the second film. There are a few critical changes to the second version of the film (who does not survive, etc.), but these changes seem credible. Both of the films honor the central theme of the book. In both versions, you’ll find people who value books more than their own lives.

1966 Version: Surreal and Unsettling

The 1966 version is rather surreal. Most people are drugged into complacency and they’re addicted to their “parlor walls” (interactive, big-screen TVs). In a playground scene, a young girl runs a giant comb through her hair. Public transportation is via an elevated monorail. The use of imagery is stronger in the first film, in which eating an apple signifies gaining knowledge. Montag in the beginning and one of the other firemen at the end, hinting that the desire to learn might spread.

Montag is intelligent and he begins to question the reason for burning books. He begins by salvaging one book from a raid and then many. Soon he’s reading incessantly, wanting to “catch up with the remembrance of the past.”

His wife is addicted to drugs and her parlor wall, specifically a television show in which the viewers are referred to as “cousins.” When she complains about Montag’s reading, he tells her that she spends her whole life with the family on the wall and the books are his family.

While Montag is leading his double life, burning books by day and reading them at night, Captain Beatty tells him that books have nothing to say, and novels tell stories of people who never existed. This makes people dissatisfied with their own lives. The Captain says, “We’ve all got to be alike. The only way to be happy is to be alike.”

2018 Version: True to the Central Theme

In the 1966 movie, the screen wall is just a television, huge at the time, but now just akin to the same size we all have in our homes today. In the 2018 version, the screen wall becomes more like a hologram and the images are not only within the home, but on the walls of many buildings outdoors.

Both films employ the symbol of the salamander, which is true to the book, but the 2018 version actually addresses the image, while the 1966 version makes us wonder all throughout the film what the meaning of it is. In an interview, Ray Bradbury revealed that when writing the story, he just let the words flow and then found intriguing connections between the character names, symbols, and themes. For example, the salamander is referred to as eating its own tail as a comparison to an entity destroying itself from within.

The 2018 version makes a highly restrictive allowance for some reading when Captain Beatty tells a class of fire-school cadets that there are only three books they need to read, the Bible , To the Lighthouse  (Virginia Woolf), and Moby Dick  (Melville). Any other book will make them sick. It would be interesting to research the reason for the second two choices in controlling a population.

The second film inflicts much harsher punishments for reading books than the first, usually carried out without due process. These punishments are broadcast on television projections, which appear on the faces of many buildings in the city.  Identity deletion is the most common punishment for being caught with a book.

In the first film, Montag hoards books from the raids, but in the second film, he also hides small cassettes, postcards, and VCR tapes. In both films he is betrayed by an informant.

Montag: Not the Only Conflicted Character

Also, in both films, the Captain seems to have an unexplained rich knowledge of the contents of the books they are burning. In the second film, when confronting a woman who housed an entire library in her home, the Captain picks up a copy of The Grapes of Wrath  and then refers to the woman as Ma Joad, a central character in the book.

Captain Beatty, who has taken Montag under his wing for the past 16 years, explains how it came to be that books became banned. He said one book offended the blacks, then another, which was about a black man, offended the whites. Then, he talked about the feminists, who were offended by many books. He explained that it’s better to just get rid of all books, so no one gets offended.

Understandably, the second film is much more futuristic than the first, employing more sophistication in its video imagery and use of voice assistants. It also introduces the concept of DNA as the saving force that will uproot the totalitarian regime.

Both films involve a community of people who each have memorized a book ensuring their legacies. In the second film, one of the book people says, “Books are here to remind us what fools we can be.”

About Me: I’m a freelancer and blogger who writes in a wide variety of genres. I especially loves movies and sharing my research on them. Follow my blog at www.AnnSilverthorn.com  and find me on Twitter , Instagram , and Facebook .

Disclaimer: I am a DVD Netflix  director, which earns me rewards.  DVD Netflix has hundreds of thousands of movies to choose from, many that you won’t find on streaming services.#DVDNation #ad

5 Comments on “ Fahrenheit 451: Comparing the 2018 Film to the 1966 Original ”

A very informative review. I used book, Fahrenheit 451, in high school English classes and always thought it was such an important book to read. After we were finished with the book, we watched the 1966 movie. I want to see the newer one now!

Good for you! I agree. It should be read in every high school English class today. . .

I had to read the book in my second year of college around 1982. At the time, I thought no way would this happen in our country. I always remembered this book and thought about “big brother, big government” and how dangerous that would be to our freedom. Now looking at it, we are there and it is very concerning to think that we are so divided as a country. We need to wake up before it is too late and we become all “like minded” and controlled and totally dependent on big brother! The end of the last free country on earth!

Very well put. I’m not sure what the solution is. People are afraid.

The 1966 is a beautiful art film with engaging actors, sets, costumes and symbolism. The 2018 version has a terrible, inappropriate lead actor. Who cares what happens to him? It’s done in a typically crude mass market style. Absolute rubbish, the only good thing about it is what is left from the book.

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Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

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Fahrenheit 451 is a 1966 British Dystopian science fiction drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring Oskar Werner, Julie Christie, and Cyril Cusack. Based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury, the film takes place in a controlled society in an oppressive future in which a fireman, whose duty it is to burn all literature, becomes a fugitive for reading. This was Truffaut's first colour film as well as his only English-language film. At the 1966 Venice Film Festival, Fahrenheit 451 was nominated for the Golden Lion.

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Create an account here, login with email, fahrenheit 451 (1966).

Clarisse:  Is it true that a long time ago, firemen used to put out fires and not burn books? Montag (fireman):  Put fires out!  Who told you that?  …Oh, what a strange idea!  Houses have always been fireproof.

This is the exactly backwards – and backward, too – world we see in Fahrenheit 451 , the 1966 movie made by François Truffaut and based on the 1953 science fiction novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury.  A totalitarian government hates independent thinking so much that for decades or longer it has banned the printed word.  Ergo, no books allowed for anyone.  The job of ferreting out and destroying any contraband books still around falls to the fire department; after all, who knows more about fire?  The fire crews do their dirty work with grim purpose – and flame throwers.

https://youtu.be/x9iyKI2pJbE

The fire chief, known as the Captain (Cyril Cusack), is a sadist who mistreats his recruits and takes sick pleasure in burning books.  “The books have nothing to say,” he claims.  Novels make people wish for lives they can never have.  Philosophers all say the same thing yet argue with each other.  Books disturb people.  On one book-burning run, the Captain explains his raison d’être:  “You see, it’s… it’s no good, Montag. We’ve all got to be alike. The only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal.”

https://youtu.be/ZaLJ10v4xUA

Montag (Oskar Werner) is in the Captain’s crew.  He performs his book-burning well; he handles a mean flame thrower and is up for a promotion.  He gives his job little thought; things have always been this way.  He can sound like his boss, though; he says, “Books make people unhappy.  They make them anti-social.”

But…people still have minds and souls and consciences.  They still love freedom.  And some brave hearts will never submit to tyranny.  So, no matter the odds, no matter the risks and the penalties, they preserve their books, squirreling them away in the nooks and crannies and secret hiding places of their homes.  Their biggest hazard is the snitches – every society has them – who anonymously tip off the fire crews about them.

Montag’s neighbor Clarisse (Julie Christie), 20, introduces herself to him on a commuter monorail, finds out what he does, and asks him if he ever reads any of the books he’s about to burn.  “Why should I?” he replies.  But her next question is, “Are you happy?” – and that starts him thinking.  Soon he brings a book home from one of his raids, and before long, more of them.

https://youtu.be/poQ25pFXIRg

Montag’s wife, Linda (also Julie Christie, but with longer hair), cares nothing about books.  She is happy staying home and smoking, nursing a sleeping pill habit and watching their “wall screen” – a big-screen TV in a 1966 film!  Linda’s favorite program is “The Family,” a government show that can interact with individual viewers.  The hostess is Cousin Claudette – think Ri Chun-hee, the North Korean Communist regime’s TV mouthpiece.  Claudette provides daily poundage totals on books destroyed.  She says things like, “Twenty-three anti-social elements were detained, pending re-education.”

Montag’s newfound fascination with books drives a wedge between him and Linda.  “They frighten me,” she tells him.  A turning point in his life happens on the fire crew’s next run.  It is to the house of a lady (Bee Duffell) who has saved a library’s worth of books – so many that the crew is told to torch the whole house. The lady refuses to leave, saying she wishes to die as she has lived.  Instead of hauling her out to safety, the fire crew readies their flame thrower (not held by Montag this time).  But she starts the fire before they can, lighting a match that ignites the books they’ve doused with kerosene.

Montag is stunned that she has died for the love of books.  Coming home after the day’s hideous work, he tells Linda and her girlfriends about it.  When they show no interest, he turns off the wall screen and calls them zombies who are just killing time, not living.  He upsets them by reading them a passage from a novel.

https://youtu.be/TkyQAg_UylY

The next day Montag runs into Clarisse, whose house has been raided.  She is a book-lover. They burn a list of her contacts, and she tells him about the Book People, who have fled society and live in remote forests.  She heads for the hills, so to speak, and he goes to the fire house and announces his intention to resign.  The Captain makes him come on one last mission, which turns out to be to his own home.  Linda has turned in her husband, and she walks out on him as the crew arrives.

The Captain, sadist that he is, orders Montag to burn his own beloved books.  Given the flame thrower, Montag burns the books, but only after setting his bed and the wall screen on fire.  He’s saved out one book, but a traitor tells on him.  When the Captain goes for the book and is ready to shoot him, Montag kills him with the flame thrower and escapes.  He makes his way to the Book People’s hideout, where he finds Clarisse and others who have each memorized, or are memorizing, a single book and are known by that book’s title instead of their own names.  The film ends with them all reciting passages and waiting for freedom’s eventual return, and the love of books along with it.

https://youtu.be/nCaLf7fA07w

A leftist would like to view the villains in this classic movie as fascists, and no one can forget the portentous events at Berlin’s Bebelplatz in 1933.  But the bad guys of Fahrenheit 451 can clearly belong to any totalitarian or authoritarian regime.  And we can be pardoned if we see similarities between Fahrenheit ’s fire crews and today’s leftist mobs and university professors, administrators and librarians who suppress knowledge of conservative thought.  We can also see parallels between the movie’s Book People and the Catholic monks who helped preserve Western civilization’s treasures of knowledge by faithfully copying and creating thousands and thousands of manuscripts through the centuries.

The film was unrated; the U.S. Catholic bishops’ rating at the time of release was A-II, Adults.  François Truffaut directed, and he and Jean-Louis Richard wrote the script.  Bernard Herrmann composed the score and Nicholas Roeg was the cinematographer.

Question: Why would people be taught to read, if books are illegal? Presumably so useful objects could be designed and constructed. In Bradbury’s novel, the regime allowed comic books and pornographic and trade magazines.

Trivia:  The “451” in the title of the film and the novel derives from what Bradbury was told was the temperature at which book paper starts to burn; the real figure can vary a bit.  The firemen, by the way, say, “four-five-one,” not “four-fifty-one”; and their symbol is a salamander, a reptile wrongly said to be able to survive fires.

A last thought: The film’s creators practiced figurative book-burning themselves.  First, they changed things around; in Ray Bradbury’s novel but not the movie, Montag preserved the Bible and the Book of Ecclesiastes.  Second, the film’s several close-up scenes of many books as they burn are marred by a few titles such as Genet, Henry Miller, de Sade, etc., and include no Christian classics other than Don Quixote . Where are Dante, Chesterton, Cardinal Newman, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, etc.?  No detail happens in films by accident, so these factors are significant.  Still, the film deserves our thanks as an indictment of totalitarianism in any form and a tribute to the love of freedom.

—  Dan Engler

• Release Date: 1966
• Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
• Rating: Not Rated

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Review: Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

Over 50 years since it first appeared on the big screen and Fahrenheit 451 is perhaps more relevant today than at any other time in its history.

Adapted from a Ray Bradbury novel, directed by François Truffaut and starring Julie Christie, it was almost impossible for Fahrenheit 451 to fail – but with a lukewarm reception on its launch and modest box office business, it wasn’t exactly a roaring success for Universal. Don’t let that put you off, it’s a great film.

Fahrenheit 451 is set in a world of the near future (at least, from the mid-1960s), a world where houses are fire-proof and the printed word is banned, entertainment coming purely from the flat-screen TVs on the wall. I know, not a huge leap of imagination to see this scenario as reality.

Why are books banned? Simple – they promote independent thought and give false aspirations in a world that doesn’t encourage free thinking. Again, not a million miles away from what might happen in the near future.

The redundant firemen (see houses above) are re-employed to start fires, specifically to seek out and burn any books still in existence. The people found with the books simply ‘disappear’.

In this world we meet high-flying Guy Montag (Oskar Werner), a man set for promotion in the fire brigade. He’s married to Linda (Julie Christie in her first role in the movie), living in a cool suburb at the edge of town.

On his commute home one day, he becomes engaged in conversation with Clarisse (also Julie Christie), developing a friendship for her whilst at the same time developing a secret interest in books. Over time that friendship blossoms as does the interest in books – as his relationship with his wife and his commitment to his job go in decline. It’s only a matter of time before he’s found out. Will he give up the books or give up his life?

Aside from being an engaging story, Fahrenheit 451 is also very appealing to the eye. From the monorail for the daily commute (sadly no longer standing, should you fancy seeking it out), to the modernist-style housing and cool futuristic interiors, not to mention the 1960s version of Julie Christie in two roles.

Purely as background viewing it’s a winner, but throw in that prophetic tale and it’s a much-underrated cult classic. Ok, it might be a little slow, the ending is a little contrived and the special effects are almost laughable, but it’s a film you’ll go back to over and over again – and each time you do, you just might see a little more of the modern world in it.

Under £5 on DVD at Amazon too – although it’s a bit pricier on Blu-ray. Also, check out the various streaming services. This is the kind of movie that might pop up on there too.

Find out more about the DVD at the Amazon website

Also, if you want to know where the housing was located, that was the Edgcumbe Park estate in Crowthorne, Berkshire . Most of the houses are pretty much as they were, so if you want to move there, you can do just that.

You can find out more about the houses here .

Trailer below too..

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Fahrenheit 451

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• Duration: 112 mins

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• Director: François Truffaut
• Screenwriter: François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard
• Oskar Werner
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• Cyril Cusack
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Film review: fahrenheit 451 (1966).

Nigel Honeybone 09/06/2011 Cult Films

REVIEW: The sixties was not an especially sparkling decade for science fiction cinema. Before 1968 only an individual film here and there stands out as a lonely island in a sea of the ordinary. The sixties was a period of intense activity in other areas of cinema, however, with a new generation of European directors creating radical shifts of taste in what the public was prepared to accept. These were the so-called New Wave directors, and every now and then they would enter the realms of surrealism and fantasy. One of these was François Truffaut who created a rather unusual essay in marginal science fiction entitled Fahrenheit 451 (1966).

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

Tags Bernard Herrmann Fahrenheit 451 François Truffaut Julie Christie Oskar Werner Ray Bradbury

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• READER REVIEWS

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

No Rating François Truffaut   Oskar Werner, Julie Christie, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring, Jeremy Spenser 112 minutes

SciFi/Fantasy

Lewis M. Allen

Distributor

Universal Pictures

Release Date

Nov 2, 1966

Release Notes

In the future, an oppressive government maintains control of public opinion by outlawing literature and maintaining a group of enforcers known as firemen to perform the necessary book burnings. This is the premise of Ray Bradbury's acclaimed science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, which became the source material for French director François Truffaut's English-language debut. While some liberties are taken with the description of the world, the narrative remains the same, as fireman Montag (Oskar Werner) begins to question the morality of his vocation. Curious about the world of books, he soon falls in love with a beautiful young member of a pro-literature underground -- and with literature itself. Critics were divided on the effectiveness of the result; some praised the unique design and eerie color cinematography by Nicolas Roeg, while others found the film's stylized approach overly distancing and attacked the central performances as unnatural. In any case, however, the film inarguably succeeds in making Truffaut's reverence for the written word abundantly clear, especially during the film's justifiably famous finale.~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

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Fahrenheit 451.

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (4)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Much more mature and original adaptation

This title has:

• Great messages
• Too much violence
• Too much swearing

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The book is essential reading for children; this adaption of the novel is a good supplement for teens and mature tweens..

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Screen: 'Fahrenheit 451' Makes Burning Issue Dull:Truffaut's First Film in English Opens Plaza Picture Presents Dual Julie Christie

By Bosley Crowther

• Nov. 15, 1966

IF François Truffaut were trying to make literature seem dull and the whole hideous practice of book-burning seem no more shocking than putting a blow-torch to a pile of leaves, he could not have accomplished his purpose much better than he unintentionally has in his first motion picture made in English, "Fahrenheit 451."Holy smoke! What a pretentious and pedantic production he has made of Ray Bradbury's futuristic story of a fireman in a hypothetical state where all reading matter is forbidden and the fire department's job is to police the citizens who try to keep books in hiding! It burns books instead of putting out fires.And, furthermore, what a dismal fellow Oskar Werner manages to make this solemnly regimented fireman who finally gets a hankering for books and becomes a fire-department dropout when he falls for a schoolteacher who owns a secret copy of the Memoirs of Saint-Simon.I can only suggest to you how dismal and unexciting he is—and by this demonstration show you how bloodless and pompous is the film—by telling you that the schoolteacher for whom he conceives a high regard is a bleakly defeminized version of his elegant, sexy wife who doesn't care beans for reading and gets all her information from watching the wall-to-wall television screen.Now, I do not suggest for one moment that the idea elucidated here is not fundamentally wholesome. A woman who bravely reads books is more likely to be socially constructive than one who is hung on TV. And the contrast arranged by Mr. Truffaut—a homely bookworm versus a beauteous TV fan—is a suitable one for illustrating the austerity of dedication to books.But it makes for pretty dreary entertainment when you have to sit there and watch a frozen-faced Mr. Werner piously turn away from a long-haired, voluptuous Julie Christie and go marching off down the railway tracks in quest of the bleak, bobbed-haired Miss Christie who has gone to the land where the book-people are.And it also makes you wonder just how sound Mr. Truffaut is in his labored enthusiasm for the glories of literature when he shows us the method of preserving the great books in his benighted state. It is by having people commit them to memory and go around reciting them by rote.Nothing could be more depressing than seeing people ambling through the woods of what looks to be a sort of adult literary camp, mechanically reciting "The Pickwick Papers" and Plato's "Dialogues," or seeing a dying man compelling his grandson to recite after him and commit to memory Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished "Weir of Hermiston." What a dismal image we have here of the deathless eloquence of literature!Now, of course, it could be that Mr. Truffaut is really trying to pull our legs in this seeming allegorical polemic, which came to the Plaza yesterday. It could be that he is trying, to tease us with a deadpan travesty of an attitude of social indignation, which is actually somewhat threadbare, after all. Mr. Bradbury's novel came out in 1953, and we all had known the shock and outrage of bookburning long before that.But it's hard to believe that Mr. Truffaut could be guilty of such poor taste. Poor writing, yes, and dull direction, but certainly not poor taste! He wouldn't dare put into a picture intended to be a joke a scene so ugly and currently evocative as one of a captured book-lover setting herself afire.Nor would be allow a subtle put-on to be so ponderous and humorless.No, it strikes me that Mr. Truffaut simply got himself tangled up with an idea that called for slashing satire of a sort beyond his grasp, and with language he couldn't fashion into lively and witty dialogue. The consequence is a dull picture—dully fashioned and dully played—which is rendered all the more sullen by the dazzling color in which it is photographed.The title, incidentally, means the heat at which paper ignites. There's no need to worry for a moment about the combustion point of film.

FAHRENHEIT 451; screenplay by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Louis Richard; based on the novel by Ray Bradbury; directed by Mr. Truffaut; produced by Lewis M. Allen; a Vineyard Films, Ltd. production distributed by Universal. At the Plaza Theater, 58th Street, East of Madison Avenue. Running time: 111 minutes.LindaClarisse . . . . . Julie ChristieMontag . . . . . Oskar WernerCaptain . . . . . Cyril CusackFabian . . . . . Anton DiffringMan With Apple . . . . . Jeremy SpenserHenri Brulard . . . . . Alex ScottTha Book-Woman . . . . . Bee DuffellTV Announcer . . . . . Gillian Lewis

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, fahrenheit 451.

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In light of current events, one can easily see why Ray Bradbury ’s 1953 novel “Fahrenheit 451” felt ripe for a new adaptation. This is a story about a government that censors and bastardizes art it finds troublesome, while making ownership of the original, unexpurgated versions a treasonous crime. Any unapproved art, mostly books, are burned by a group of firemen led by Captain Beatty and his successor-in-waiting Guy Montag. While they hunt down the novel’s equivalent of “fake news,” most of the populace has been voluntarily anesthetized by mass media designed to give them exactly what they want.

François Truffaut took on this material in 1966, and now director Ramin Bahrani has created a 2018 adaptation for HBO. This version changes Bradbury’s older, unhappily married protagonist into a much younger and virile Michael B. Jordan and adds language far saltier than the “damns” and “hells” that once got the novel in trouble with censors. Bahrani and his co-writer Amir Naderi also attempt to update the story for today’s audiences. As a result, several plot points are either modified slightly or changed beyond recognition.

Fans of the novel may find these new additions to be blasphemous, but fealty to the source material is not a requirement in adaptations nor is it always welcome. However, this take on “Fahrenheit 451” has a bigger problem than its occasionally unsuccessful changes. For just as the evolution of television has weakened the satirical direction of Paddy Chayevsky’s “ Network ” by bending it toward documentary, so too has today’s political climate steered Bradbury’s science fiction ideas into the realm of the factual. Ironically, much of the novel’s shock value and allegorical power also feels weakened as a result.

“Stay Vivid on the Nine,” says the reporter whose visage is projected onto skyscrapers throughout a futuristic version of Cleveland. The Nine is a state-run combination of Twitter and a 24-hour news channel, with cascading emojis and text serving as real-time commentary on whatever topic is trending. It’s the only game in town; there doesn’t appear to be anything else to watch. The Nine also broadcasts book burnings and the arrests of the “eels” who have been hiding the doomed reading material. The stars of this particular program are Montag and his superior, Captain Beatty ( Michael Shannon ). They’re part of a group of powerful firemen who use flamethrowers to burn not only books but the homes of criminals found in possession of contraband.

Montag loves his job—and the publicity—until an old woman decides to self-immolate rather than go quietly while her library of books gets destroyed. Before she lights the match that ends her life, she mutters a word that appears to be code. The powers that be at The Nine change her final word to something more crowd-pleasing, though as someone points out, her lips don’t match the soundtrack. Montag is so shaken by the woman’s suicide that he steals a book so that he may understand why someone would die for it. Montag’s uncertainly increases when he falls into the orbit of Clarisse (Sofia Butella), a double agent who serves as both a snitch for Captain Beatty and one of the leaders of an underground book club big enough to rival Oprah’s.

Meanwhile, Captain Beatty has been writing phrases and ideas on small strips of paper he subsequently burns. The older Beatty has some familiarity with books and the time before they became banned. He tells Montag that books are full of non-existent characters whose ideas have the capability to upset people, harshing their mellow and interfering with the perpetual happiness that The Nine offers.

“Fahrenheit 451” points out that while the government passed the censorship laws, it was the people who clamored for them to be passed. This is a major idea that the film doesn’t really contemplate; the general public is represented solely by the aforementioned emojis that cover The Nine. If you’ve read the book or any of the writing Bradbury did regarding his novel, you’d know that the genesis of the idea that books bring unhappiness started with folks complaining about lack of representation or lackluster characterizations of minorities and women. Captain Beatty briefly alludes to this in a scene where he uses the N-word while explaining why people originally complained about a particular book. This premise is a sharp, pointed and potentially offensive one that warrants further interrogation, but this film is unwilling to cut too deeply.

As for the actors: Michael Shannon is well-cast here. He’s intimidating when he’s barking orders and does a fine job with his monologues. Despite having top billing (and a producer credit), Michael B. Jordan isn’t given a fully fleshed out character to play. We never really feel his dilemma nor his trauma. And his romance with Clarisse (who also isn’t fully realized) is as unwise as the film’s ridiculous usage of a bird with literature in its DNA. This is one of those additions that just doesn’t work. On the plus side, that bird figures in scenes with a group of book-remembering rebels led by the great Khandi Alexander .

I wish “Fahrenheit 451” had been as dynamic and fiery as its very effective opening credits sequence. Bahrani shoots extreme close-ups of book pages burning, their words and images contorting and exploding grotesquely across the screen. There’s a kinetic energy to it, a promise of something far more daring than we get. Despite boasting a darker fate for Montag than Bradbury envisioned, this version of “Fahrenheit 451” lacks the burning commentary that would justify why the filmmakers wanted to revisit this story in the first place. Just read the book, folks.

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Fahrenheit 451 (2018)

101 minutes

Michael B. Jordan as Guy Montag

Michael Shannon as Captain Beatty

Sofia Boutella as Clarisse McClellan

Laura Harrier as Millie Montag

Lilly Singh as Raven

Saad Siddiqui as Stone

Daniel Zolghadri as Clifford

Jane Moffat as Sam Sheppard

Andy McQueen as Gustavo

Grace Lynn Kung as Chairman Mao

Keir Dullea as Historian

• Ramin Bahrani

Writer (novel)

• Ray Bradbury
• Amir Naderi

Cinematographer

• Kramer Morgenthau
• Antony Partos
• Matteo Zingales

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