Fahrenheit 451 [DVD]

It's curious that a director who spent so much of his early career railing against the tyranny of the literary tradition in French cinema should spend so much of his career either adapting novels or filling his films with techniques from and references to literature at every turn, so his attraction to Ray Bradbury's fable isn't that surprising. What is surprising is that in many ways it's his most purely cinematic film, discarding his usual over-reliance on voice-over to carry underwritten scenes for more purely cinematic forms of interpretation. Even the readings from the forbidden books are kept to a minimum: the obsession is in Montag's behavior, not the words he speaks. Truffaut's playfulness is all over the material, from casting an actor who forbade his children to watch TV or go to the cinema as the fire chief (Cyril Cusack in the film's standout performance) to dramatically masking off half the screen and heightening the dramatic music for what turns out to be a less than dramatic moment in a search - and that's without the inclusion of Cahiers du Cinema among the burning books or mentioning Anton Diffring's brief moment in drag. But then this is an absurdist world, where firemen slide up poles and start fires and where fascism is accepted in that way it always is when gradually introduced because of people's innate ability to adapt to their circumstances, no matter how absurd or restricting. It improves on Bradbury's novel by losing some of the more distancing sci-fi devices such as the fortune telling dog, and setting it's future in a soulless post-war New Town environment that is close enough to the real look of the time to add to the credibility. Much of what there is in the film isn't that far from reality, with plasma wall screens offering inept interactive' TV (even down to pressing the red button) becoming status symbols, and betrayal increasingly encouraged as an everyday, socially acceptable act. Indeed, the world it presents, where people touch themselves, not each other, and where conflicting ideas are discouraged because they just make people unhappy, seems all too contemporary. Only what is possibly the single worst special effect in film history (those laughable flying policeman on all-too visible wires), the film's one ill-judged excursion into optical effects, sticks out like a sore thumb. Despite the huge problems between Oskar Werner (who wanted to play Montag with a wink and a smile) and Truffaut (who ended the shoot directing through an intermediary, using body doubles and having to cut Werner's takes shortly before he smiled!), Montag seems a credible protagonist, an empty vessel who suddenly has his horizons violently opened. Even the accent seems strangely right: not so much the idea of a German playing a fascist book burner (indeed, Diffring's German accent is dubbed here), but the way it seems to compliment the formal language of the piece. Even Julie Christie's blandness and sporadic awkward enthusiasm work well enough in this environment for her almost to seem to give a perform for once. Throw in Bernard Herrmann's remarkably beautiful, sparingly used score, never more effective than in the final sequences that are almost magically complimented by the happy accident of a totally unexpected snowfall, and the result is a surprisingly moving piece about fundamentally shallow people. And it is a very comforting thought that, if behind every book is a man (or woman), then somewhere there is a man or woman who will keep every book alive despite all efforts to destroy it. Universal's DVD is one of the very best on the market: the audio commentary is occassionally unsatisfying, but any gaps are more than filled in by the excellent 45-minute documentary, interview with Ray Bradbury, featurette on Herrmann's score, alternate title sequence, stills and poster gallery and trailer. Highly recommended.

The picture and overall look of this print is quite good. The movie is based a a rare novel (he usually does anthologies) by Ray Bradbury, whose short story "chrysalis " is the first real thing outside of comics that I remember reading back in elementary school. This is one of his greatest works. Funny that a man who hated television has one of his greatest works on the video screen. But it's an amazing effort. And Truffaut was on his game when he directed this effort. I've heard that there is a modern version of this movie, but I won't watch it. This movie that I saw in my youth will always be the only version that is worth watching. It captures the lyrical style of Bradbury. Any other version would be like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. These modern "woke" types might think they are accomplishing something by their efforts but they are really like children Trying to destroy the work of giants that they can scarcely understand. In a way they are the anti-intellectuals that Bradbury was trying to warn us about

An absolute classic. Rewatched recently. Never thought I would think this film would be relevant again in 2025 for so many reasons, but here we are. This film is worth a view if you haven't seen it.

This is a very capable adaptation of the novel, especially given the deteriorating relationship between director and screenwriter Truffaut and clunky, sometimes ineffective, lead Oskar Werner. Also complicating things was that an unbelievable wealth of ideas in the novel had to be mined very selectively to make the film. Nevertheless, Truffaut and his team made a sensitive, thought-provoking, and sometimes beautiful film that Bradbury greatly liked. There are three terrific special features on the DVD, and the novelist's participation in all of them is a highlight. Many of us read this book about a kinder gentler dictatorship long ago in high school or college, and it's sometimes hard to tell what's more frightening. That so much of the novel has come true, or that so many of the ugly things that have come to be in our modern, so-called civilized society (i.e., the internet, globalization, Big Data, corporate dictatorship) were beyond the imagination of even a great futurist writer. About so many things however, Bradbury was amazingly forward-thinking and spot on. His warnings about television, essentially now all but forgotten, were unreservedly prescient. He pulls no punches in exposing television (the “wall family”) for what it really is: a mind-numbing, anesthetizing fraud. There's a hilarious scene where the evening's TV entertainment is of two men having a manic, interminable conversation, struggling to cover the tiniest details, about the seating arrangement at an upcoming dinner party—in other words, about absolutely nothing … complete pointlessness. It all takes place on a big, wall-mounted flat screen, and everybody wants as many wall families in the home as he can afford. Sound familiar? It makes one recall Reynolds Price's line about the undergraduates coming into his classroom at Duke with their “poor television-devastated brains.” A few thoughts on how this writing genre got from there to here. In the wake of the horrific atrocities of two world wars in the 20th century, there emerged a “scientific” movement (social science, or behaviorism) with the benevolent aim of understanding causes of war, building a just society, and preventing appalling global conflicts. Two of the most famous isms to appear were socialism and communism. To achieve the mass cooperation needed for their version of widespread economic development, it was presumed that sophisticated methods for compliance with the “new doctrine” would be needed, such as shaping or controlling thought rather than using coercion. Around the world there grew enormous concerns that using science (generally used to understand physical realities) to create political systems (social realities) would produce an unwanted mutation—a new kind of dictatorship, a Frankenstein. Or maybe folks simply believed that all people of these isms were Godless savages. In any event, the fear was so intense that it influences anti-communism right up to the present day. At that time, a group of writers published quite a lot on the insidious methods of the new dystopia. In Bradbury's book, the government doesn't control people by controlling information through propaganda. It controls people through mass ignorance: drugs, television, and the banning of all printed words. Yup. It all seems a bit mad, and it begins to hit very close to home. But Bradbury and the film do maintain a sense of humor. Have some fun looking for the anachronisms, odd color schemes, and the film-makers' obvious disdain for modernist design (poor van der Rohe). There are also occasional brief shots, in a fully remastered film, shown unrestored. For those who think one would never see this kind of official misology in the modern world: When you see politicians, in the U.S. and elsewhere, rail against elites and their damnable ideas, the message is that knowledge will get you nowhere—exactly the government's position in Fahrenheit. You may not see state of the art special effects in this film, but expect a lot of food for thought of that sort. Bradbury once said that films today are brilliant technologically, “But you come out aching, and you’re hungry. You haven’t seen anything. With Truffaut, you've seen something.” The film’s thesis is clear and burning hot. The real threat is ignorance of thoughts and feelings, whether imposed by the few or freely chosen by the many. True, most people aren't interested in a lifetime of deep thinking, but the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. It’s a bizarre irony that in a world of mass public education, there are so many people content to disconnect from books, plays, articles, poetry, all kinds of written words and the life-affirming thoughts and feelings, both positive and negative, that they contain—content to turn off leaning. And to disconnect from those thoughts and feelings is to disconnect from the two things that define what it means to be human in the most fundamental sense. When we disconnect from thoughts and feelings, we become intellectually and emotionally ignorant, we fail to understand self, and become disconnected from both self (alienated) and others (atomized). That’s the world of Fahrenheit 451, in some ways resembling our own world. So that it's not learning for some abstract elitist purpose. It's learning for the purpose of connecting with thoughts and feelings, both ours and those of others … for the purpose of being human. And in the end, that humanity (“simple human decency” [Chayefsky]) is all any of us really has in this life. Writers may be “a minority of undesirables crying out in the wilderness,” and they may write of pain. But pain reminds you that you're alive, and there can be no pleasure in life without it. Becoming comfortable with that reality--learning to cry as well as to laugh--is part of growing up. Literature is the “power of memory,” our history and future, and our collective thoughts and feelings. Remove it from your personal life, and those are the things likely lost. In Fahrenheit, this produces a mostly quiet, compliant, and self-absorbed public. In reality, we know that ignorance is at the heart of alienation, malice, and violence. Ultimately this isn't at all a story about what the government does. It's about the choices individuals make to remain connected, or not, to their humanness. Much of the film's visual bareness comes to an end in the final scene with the book people. It's one of those moments in cinema when imagery, music, screenplay, and performance--thought and feeling--come together to produce revelation … a sort of spirituality … and something with great pictorial and emotional beauty. Bradbury said, “If you have a good film and end it badly, you have a bad film. If you have a medium film and end it beautifully, you have a beautiful film.” The book people show us that Fahrenheit 451 is indeed a beautiful film.

François Truffauts Verfilmung von Ray Bradbury's Dystopie über eine bücherfeindliche Gesellschaft, in der die totalitäre Kontrolle scheinbar nicht von einem diktatorischen Regime, sondern von der Allgegenwart der Medien herrührt, ist so eigenwillig wie treffsicher. Zwar weicht der Film in vielen Details von der Romanvorlage ab und zeichnet auf den ersten Blick ein fast zu idyllisches Bild von Bradbury's kalter, mechanisierter Gesellschaft, in dem einige der grausamen Details des Buches (z.B. der Mechanische Hund) ausgeblendet sind und zwischenmenschliche Wärme zumindest noch in Ansätzen vorhanden ist, während sie bei Bradbury vollkommen durch reibungsloses Funktionieren alltäglicher Abläufe, sorgfältig aufeinander abgestimmte Drogen und die alles übertönende Omnipräsenz der Unterhaltungsmedien ersetzt worden ist. Nicht zuletzt unterstreicht die Figur der Clarisse (die im Film deutlich erwachsener und sexualisierter auftritt als im Buch), dass Truffaut den literarischen Stoff von Bradbury's Roman zu einer ganz eigenen Geschichte verarbeitet. Und doch bleibt Truffauts Film den Themen des Buches treu: An die Stelle der teilweise explizit visualisierten Grausamnkeit im Buch treten subtile Anspielungen, Szenen hinter Milchglas und um die Ecke herum aufgenommen, welche beinahe klinisch sauber und ordentlich inszeniert sind und darum nicht weniger intensiv wirken als das Buch und damit der Hauptbotschaft von "Fahrenheit 451" in jedem Augenblick treu bleiben: den unheimlichen und unheilvollen Konsequenzen für eine Gesellschaft, welche den Köpfen der Menschen die Bücher und damit auch der Gebrauch der eigenen Vorstellungskraft verbietet. Die oberflächlich saubere und unterschwellig brodelnde Stimmung in der Gesellschaft erhält ihre Intensität nicht zuletzt durch die hervorragende, vielschichtige Schauspielerleistung der Hauptdarsteller (Oskar Werner, welcher der Figur Montags ein ganz eigenes, stilles Gesicht mit Tiefe verleiht, und Julie Christie, welche die beiden Figuren der Mildred/Linda und Clarisse mit Temperament und Leben füllt) Die DVD ist filmisch vollkommen in Ordnung - behält jedoch die Farb- und Konturenqualität, welche die 70er Jahre kennzeichnet. Synchronisation und Untertitel funktionieren gut, und das Bonusmaterial bietet vielfältige und interessante Einblicke in die Ansichten Truffauts und Bradburys, die hinter der Geschichte stehen.

Es una gran pel.li al marge del llibre en q es sustenta. I us haig d dir q no he trobat les imatges i escenografia gens "antigues" com m'esperava, ans al contrari les trobo molt sugeridores. Els homes-llibre son commovedors. Jo la vaig veure x primer cop en blanc-i-negre a la tve, l'unica q hi havia llavors, i no l'havia vist sencera en els seus colors originals. Em semble una gran troballa els dos personatges femenins interpretats x la inspiradora julie christie. Fixeu-vos q en gran mida la ficcio del parentiu establert entre televidents i els personatges q apareixen a les telepantalles s'ha acomplert, aqui ho son en quart grau, cossins, mentre a "1984" el parentiu es mes proxim i atabalador si escau.

Viene en excelente estado y es de buena calidad, pero no cuenta con subtítulos en español, solo en inglés y en varios otros.

pellicola del 1966 diretta da Truffaut, ispirata all'omonimo romanzo di Ray Bradbury. Genere utopistico, ambientato in un'umanità del futuro dove i pompieri hanno il compito di incendiare i libri, proibiti per legge. Protagonista è uno di questi pompieri, Montag, che a un certo punto della sua carriera conosce Julia, una sua vicina di casa che gli chiede se ha mai letto i libri che ha bruciato. Spinto dalla curiosità, Montag in seguito a una delle sue missioni porterà a casa sua un libro che avrebbe dovuto bruciare, leggendolo e cominciando ad appassionarsi a quanto scritto nei libri. ne leggerà sempre di più, e di ogni genere, suscitando la reazione negativa della moglie Linda, spaventata per avere i libri in casa. Montag infatti sarà costretto a fare una scelta: o continuare la sua vita di sempre, insieme alla moglie e con il suo lavoro in procinto di promozione, oppure scappare e iniziare una nuova vita, assieme a Julia e agli "uomini-libro", persone che abitano in posti sperduti e che imparano i libri a memoria, allo scopo di conservarli in eterno. Interessante l'idea di dare alla stessa attrice il duplice ruolo di Linda e di Julia.

It's a brilliant film. don't get me wrong there are a few problems; underdeveloped characters, Julie Christie playing the exact same character in two different roles (Linda Montag and Clarisse McClellan) doesn't do her any favours when judging her acting and the missing Mechanical Spider (which is there throughout the book in its menacing form), but forget those shortcomings and enjoy the rest. Oscar Werner is superb in how troubled he comes across, Cyril Cusack is a difficult boss but is also very learned and ignorant at the same time, Anton Diffring, whilst underused is brilliant in the jealousy and spite to Montag he shows. And the family? They can all go and take a run and jump but the menace during the play for today, in the eyes of the play's cast, when they break the fourth wall, is a gem). Author Ray Bradbury preferred the film's ending to his own book's ending, that's a great compliment to the screenwriter. The climax is emotive and the music (especially the harp in the minor key) are a great finish to this film. If you are only going to get one Fahrenheit 451 film in your life get this one and not that god-awful made for TV one with Michael B Jordan (which rips the heart out of the book and film). This is when acting was still key to films, it's a much underrated classic