Fahrenheit 451

Released 1966
Stars Oskar Werner, Julie Christie, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring, Jeremy Spenser, Bee Duffell
Directed by François Truffaut

Odd and generally slow-going adaptation of Ray Bradbury sci-fi novel depicting future Earth civilization where all printed reading material is banned. Though viewer interest is held throughout, film has curiously reserved, unemotional feel to it. Truffaut's only film in English.

Summary by Leonard Maltin

I read and loved the novel when I was a teen-ager, and now I finally have seen the film 20 years later. I don't remember the novel that well, but I expected much more from the movie. I liked the retro-future look, but it was slow and unemotional. The most interesting question to ask is how the people knew how to read despite the fact books were banned during their lifetimes. The movie doesn't address the issue, but I don't think the novel does either. Regardless, the story is an interesting allegory to Nazism and fascism. One choice by Truffaut that I found curious was casting Oskar Werner as the lead. The rest of the cast are heterogenously white and British. Oskar, on the other hand, had an Austrian accent, which was difficult to understand at times. -- Bill Alward, June 21, 2001