Amazon.com Essentials:
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
