Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

This film is a rather paced review of the life and times of "fireman" Guy Montag. A model citizen of his community he is committed to service. He serves the public trust by cleansing society of its deplorable elements. In this case books. Because books are the tools of free thought. Which creates free speech and free expression. Which has proved offensive and has brought a need to bring order. By burning books.Our fireman is good at his work and has come due for promotion. His superiors believe he is their man. At home his obedient , care free wife is thrilled by the promotion as now a second full sized television can be bought to stream the state approved news. Yet in all of this worker's paradise there remains dissent and disharmony. Persons committed to hiding books and who defiantly express a different opinion. Daring to grow long hair , audaciously leaving their collar unbuttoned at work. Suddenly to Montag the dream looks rather like a nightmare.As he grows closer to a recently befriended woman , he discovers she too is a reader of books. His inability to reconcile the cause of equality in the burning of books as pronounced by the select few of the state , and the rights of individuality's that these security measures trample and smash , causes him madness and uproots his life.His wife quietly spies on him during this period he struggles with. As any good member , a patriot , would do she reports him to the state , and leaves him , removing herself from the toxic influence of a being that is both emotional and has developed morality independent of collective populist opinion. After this event Montag's boss , brings Montag to his house to persecute him for being the domestic terrorist he has now become. His boss is proved correct when Montag kills him with a flamethrower in his own home. After which Montag is pursued relentlessly by the state police for this murder.He finds refuge outside of town with a literary group of terrorists , who are so fanatically indoctrinated by their evil , they have gone to the length of memorizing the works of great authors verbatim. A rouge agent of the cell returns to town to commit suicide in order to pass the belief that Montag is dead. So he remains in the isolated camp cut off from civilization and free to explore thought and emotion.A good look at how a society can willfully promote ignorance through misinformation , non disclosure and blind obedience or nationalism.

I'm glad the book was better. In a strange way, if the movie was better than the book, I wouldn't have liked the movie as much as I did. The book (and the film) is about the importance of reading. You should read the book before seeing the movie , because first of all it's better, and second of all it's kind of what the story is about. Guy Montag (Oskar Werner) is a "fireman" in a totalitarian future. His job is to destroy books, which have now been banned because of their contrasting opinions. He lives with his wife Linda Montag (Julie Christie) who spends all her time inside watching TV. All is good and bland, until one day Montag meets a freethinking school teacher Clarisse McClellan (Christie) whose free spirit and individuality causes him to question the book-less society. Soon Montag starts taking books and he eventually becomes devoted to saving them. The movie is good, but it's kind of weird. I didn't really get a very surreal feel from the book but in the movie it works all right. It also takes creative liberties from the book. But overall, it's a pretty good adaptation. If you've read the book, this is worth a watch.

Yet another film, like The Time Machine earlier this month, that makes me want to put down my copy of 1984, which I am also reading. The three of these dystopian futures predicting a world in which there is no written word, or the books themselves are purposely destroyed, makes me want to stay in my blanket fort all day clutching my copies of Harry Potter. In Fahrenheit 451, we meet Guy Montag (Oskar Werner) who works as a fireman; only in the future, firemen exist to start fires to burn books. One can quickly see that Montag is not fulfilled by his work. Even at the news that he will be receiving a promotion, he is not satisfied with himself. One day he meets a woman on the transport, Clarisse (Julie Christie) who seems to be fascinated by the simpleton soldier he seems to be. She sees more in Montag, soon after the audience realizes there is more to see in him as well. He goes about life as a loner, mindlessly carrying along with the other firemen at the station, and even more mindlessly with his wife at home. One can soon tell he is quite conflicted by his work to burn and destroy literature. One morning, a distressed Clarisse urges Montag to go with her to the school she has just been fired from. School is a terrifying place in this film. All the children dress the same and repeat the same learning rhymes no matter the age. Hearing the echoes through the building as Montag and Clarisse pass through the halls is deafening, as the audience realizes that this generation of children will never even know books to have existed. There is no turning back for Montag when one of the calls that his unit responds to is to burn an entire home library. The owner of the home repeats one of the rhymes drilled into the school children's heads before proceeding to set herself on fire among her books, because she would rather burn with them than live without them. It is at this moment that Montag stops feeling so alone, he knows there are people that feel as strongly about books as he does. He must flee to a place where he is accepted, and Clarisse knows just the place. She directs him to a land in which people memorize books and live amongst each other in the peace of their literature and free of the fear that anyone could ever take anything from them, because they themselves become the books.A future without written word looks like a scary place. Montag's home was barren and bleak, with only a telescreen for entertainment. Set design stood out the most for me throughout the film. It was a large task to undertake to make television look dismal, and the art department does a wonderful job of making this a reality. The sterile look of Montag's home made me feel as though I was watching life in a hospital. In a way we are watching life in a hospital, entertainment is mandated, emotions are nonexistent, and it seems as though everyone is just waiting to be done. As Montag remarked, in this world, you're not living, you're just killing time." In addition to the set design, the film was beautifully scored, as legendary Bernard Herrmann lent his talents to this film. Herrmann was also famously behind Citizen Kane, Psycho, and Taxi Driver. Scored beautifully, the audience is entranced by a world so different, and hopefully distant, from our own.The literal theme of burning books is not simply a relic of Nazi Germany. Even today, the fight over school textbooks rages on. We are constantly fighting a battle within our own society on what to permit and what to omit of our own history. This film serves as an adequate warning that we must accept even the darkest parts of our history must be reported and learned from or the all too real possibility of what took place in Fahrenheit 451 could be reality. On a less surface level, one can learn from seeing how much Montag went along sullenly through his life to do something that you find meaningful in life. Rendering your life as a big exercise in killing time will certainly leave you empty, as Montag was before he joined the book people. One must do what makes them come alive and do whatever that is fervently, as to live their own life to its fullest potential. Fahrenheit 451 provided a prudent example of the psychological pitfalls to avoid in life, a reminder we all need as we become submerged in simply going through the motions.As beautiful of a film as Fahrenheit 451 is, I would recommend this film to all students of film. A sensory experience such as this is not to be ignored by those seriously interested in filmmaking. It almost goes without saying that it is a necessity for any fans of Truffaut to see Fahrenheit 451, as well. I've been indebted to François Truffaut ever since the first time I saw Jules et Jim. I was completely blown away by this film and vowed to see as many works from the French auteur as I possibly could. Fahrenheit 451 did not disappoint, if I had the experience to do over, however, I would probably not watch this film at the same time as reading George Orwell's 1984, as I'm now searching the internet for safes for all my books

There was a lot of exposition, especially with the monorail going back and forth, which showed the sheer monotony of the kind of lives the people were living, and could have been cut back.The movie never showed WHY Montag started reading the books that he burned. Was it just the curiosity that Clarisse started in him, or was he already dissatisfied with his life, and was looking for a way out of it? What was up with all of the oranges in the movie? On the breakfast table and in the break room at the firehouse? Plus the orange juice dispenser? I mean I like orange juice, but not THAT often? I don't recall a lot of meat being served in the movie. Was everyone a vegetarian? And just what was Fabian's deal? Was he jealous of Montag's promotion? Of Montag himself? Or was he simply an opportunistic jerk? Oskar I think, was hampered by the stilted dialogue, along with his really BAD relationship with Truffaut, and came across as a bit of a zombie in his relationship with his wife Linda; only really coming to life with Clarisse.I highly recommend the movie, but it does have its bad spots.