Trivia for
Fahrenheit 451 (1966) More at IMDbPro »

• Among the books burned by the firemen is the film journal "Cahiers du Cinema" for which director François Truffaut wrote. Pictured on the cover is a picture from À bout de souffle (1960), written by Truffaut. Also among the books burned is "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451" itself, both written by Ray Bradbury.
  
  
• Director François Truffaut was so eager to begin filming that he and co-writer Jean-Louis Richard wrote the screenplay before they had fully mastered English. Ultimately, Truffaut was disappointed in the awkward, stilted English-language dialogue; he was much happier with the French-dubbed version, which he supervised.
  
  
• The first and only English language film for director François Truffaut.
  
  
• The film's credits are spoken, not read, in keeping with the film's theme of destruction of reading material.
  
  
• According to producer Lewis M. Allen, François Truffaut and Oskar Werner hated each other by the end of filming. For the last two weeks, they didn't speak to one another.
  
  
• For the part of the captain, producers considered Laurence Olivier, Sterling Hayden, and Michael Redgrave before hiring Cyril Cusack.
  
  
• According to producer Lewis M. Allen, it was his last-minute idea to have Julie Christie play both main female roles. Allen says Terence Stamp then withdrew from playing Montag because Stamp felt that with two parts, Christie would overshadow him.
  
  
• Oskar Werner cut his hair for the final scene to purposely create a continuity error. This was due to his hatred for the director.
  
  
• The title of the movie (and the book) comes from the exact temperature at which paper catches fire.
  
  
• Author Ray Bradbury never did any fact-checking in regards to the title. He asked a fire chief what temperature book paper burned at, and was given the answer "451 degrees Fahrenheit." He liked the title so much, he didn't bother to see if it was the correct temperature (it is.)
  
  
• Paul Newman, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Aznavour, Peter O'Toole, and Terence Stamp were all considered for the role of Montag.
  
  
• Montgomery Clift supposedly also passed on the Guy Montag role.
  
  
• Books shown or mentioned in the movie: - Don Quixote - Othello, the Moor of Venice - Vanity Fair - Madame Bovary - Le monde a coté - Alice's Adventues in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass - Gaspard Hauser - Robinson Crusoe - The World of Salvador Dali - Jeanne d'Arc - Life and Loves - The Weather - My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin - Les negres - Confessions of an Irish Rebel - The Ginger Man - Petrouchka - The Catcher In The Rye - The Moon and Sixpence - Lolita - David Copperfield - Mein Kampf - She Might Have Been Queen - Social Aspects of Disease - The Ethics of Aristotle - The Brothers Karamazov - The Sorrows of Young Werther - The Martian Chronicles - Plato's Republic - Fahrenheit 451 - Pride and Prejudice
  
  
• The scene where the fireman first put on his gear, is filmed in reverse. The same scene but in normal run is used again later for him to take out his gear.
  
  
• Amongst the actresses considered for the role of Clarisse/Linda Montag was Jean Seberg.
  
  
• François Truffaut's first film in color.
  
  
• Although film editor Thom Noble speculates on the DVD that the books burned in the film's fire sequences were all director François Truffaut's, the director actually solicited paperbacks from grips, electricians and other crew members working on the film because he felt that well-worn, dogeared copies achieved the effect he wanted to convey.
  
  
• Many of the books burned during the entire movie are director François Truffaut's favorites. Producer Lewis M. Allen says that it's possible that Truffaut himself brought the books.
  
  
• According to producer Lewis M. Allen, François Truffaut spoke virtually no English, and the cast and crew mostly operated in French. Oskar Werner, Julie Christie, cinematographer Nicolas Roeg and associate producer Michael Dalamar all spoke French. Allen had high school French, but editor Thom Noble did not speak the language at all.
  
  
• Producer Lewis M. Allen said the studio's legal department requested that only books in the public domain be shown burning for fear of being sued by offended authors. Director François Truffaut and Allen ignored the request, believing that anyone would be flattered to have their book included.
  
  
• Director 'Francois Truffaut' cast Oskar Werner, the star of his classic Jules et Jim (1962), in the role of Guy Montag, after Terence Stamp dropped out of the role because he apparently had problems with the idea of co-starring with Julie Christie, his former lover. Stamp felt that Christie's appearing in dual roles would overshadow him. Losing his ideal Montag (the film after all was set in England), Truffaut turned to the Austrian Werner, whose accent and demeanor were decidedly non-English. The great director came to regret his casting choice as he became dismayed by Werner's interpretation of the character and the two frequently clashed.
  
  
• The location filming of the final sequence with the "Book People" took place in poor weather. It was hoped that the weather would improve for the final days of shooting. Instead, they discovered that it had begun snowing during the night. The filming of the final shots while it was snowing was an unplanned contribution to the film's memorable ending.
  
  
• Anton Diffring is dubbed.
  
  
• While shooting in London Truffaut felt no rapport with the English crew since he spoke only French, so off the set he held up in the hotel room for six months and had his meals brought to his room. When he got back in Paris, his friends asked him what swinging London was like and he answered "I don't know - I just got out of the Hilton."
  
  
• François Truffaut considered science fiction as uninteresting and arbitrary and because he was saying that someone told him the story of Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451. Immediately after hearing the story Truffaut wanted to make a movie about it and it took him years to raise the money for making it.
  
  
• François Truffaut said that only in this movie he had serious troubles with an actor and that was Oskar Werner. Truffaut asked Oskar to forget heroics and play with great deal of modesty, but he wanted to play it with arrogance. They were constantly misunderstanding each other. Truffaut didn't like robotic performance that Oskar gave and asked him to play it like a monkey discovering books for the first time, sniffing at them, wondering what they are; but Oskar said that because it was science fiction film he'll play it like a robot.
  
  
• Because François Truffaut had so much trouble with the leading actor, Oskar Werner, he said that if he hasn't wasted six years into making this film that he would have left the set like a shot.
  
  
• François Truffaut and Oskar Werner died within two days of each other in October 1984. Truffaut was 52 and Werner was 62.
  
  
• The eight-legged "mechanical hound" of the book doesn't appear in the movie, but the movie's fire engine has a hood ornament which consists of a many-legged animal that looks like it could represent the hound.
  
  

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