Fahrenheit 451 (film)
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Fahrenheit 451 is a 1966 film of a dystopian future, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. It is set in a world where books are banned and critical thought is suppressed; the central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this case, means "book burner"). 451 degrees Fahrenheit (about 233°C) is stated as "the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns ...". It was directed by François Truffaut, his first and only English-language film.
The movie differed somewhat from the novel. For example, Clarisse survives throughout the film and accompanies Montag when he leaves the city, and the role played by Faber is reduced significantly, appearing only briefly in one scene as an old man asleep on a park bench. Bradbury has said that Truffaut "captured the soul and essence of the book," although he disliked the double omission of Faber and the Mechanical Hound. The film starred Oskar Werner as Montag and Julie Christie in the dual roles of Linda (Mildred) Montag and Clarisse.
Production
- The film was shot at Pinewood Studios in England, with the monorail scene taken at Châteneuf-sur-Loire near Orléans, France.
- The monorail was the French SAFEGE demonstrator system.
- François Truffaut spoke virtually no English, but co-wrote the screenplay with Jean-Louis Richard. Truffaut expressed disappointment with the often stilted and unnatural English-language dialogue. He was much happier with the version which was dubbed into French.
- The production work was done in French.
- The friendship between Truffaut and Werner soured during the filming of Fahrenheit 451. Exhibiting profound disillusionment, Truffaut complained (not without justification) that Werner had become a "cold" performer. During the last two weeks of filming, things had become so bad that the director and actor would not even speak to each other. Werner would stay in his trailer all day drinking wine, and he would only communicate with Truffaut on set through messages passed between him and other crewmembers. Towards the end of the film, Werner had his hair cut differently from the appearance of his character Guy Montag in earlier parts of the film, creating continuity problems — look closely and you can see that it has been fluffed up to make it look more as it previously was.
- Also evidence of Truffaut's and Werner's soured relationship was the director's use of a heavily tobacco-stained hand for an insert shot later in the film. The hand in question can be seen when Montag reaches out from behind a blanket while he hides in a boat.
- The scene in the playground where half the screen blacks out is noted and regarded as unique in the "Making of Fahrenheit 451" on the DVD edition.
List of works and authors mentioned
Note: According to the book Bradbury: An Illustrated Life, neither Bradbury nor Truffaut chose the books that appear in the movie. However, the DVD commentary suggests that many or all of the books used came from Truffaut's personal library.
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Arthur Schopenhauer
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- Leo Tolstoy
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
- Metaphysics by Aristotle
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- Nadia
- Othello by William Shakespeare
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (volumes 1 and 2)
- Republic by Plato
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- The Corsair by George Byron
- The Good Life
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
- The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
- The Trial by Franz Kafka
- Walt Whitman
- William Faulkner
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
- A History of Science & Technology
- A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
- A Year of Grace
- Argos
- Baby Doll
- Cahiers du Cinéma
- Christopher Landon
- Confessions of an Irish Rebel by Brendan Behan
- Death of a Dream
- Death of a Ghost by Margaret Allingham
- Death on Milestone Buttress by Glyn Carr
- Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
- Deux Anglaises et le Continent
- Dom Juan by Molière
- Fathers And Sons by Ivan Turgenev
- Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
- Gasparo Hauser (This is the book Montag takes in the film, as opposed to the Bible in the novel)
- Geheimnisse der Fürstin von Cadignan by Honoré de Balzac
- Gone with the Wind
- Holy Deadlock by A. P. Herbert
- In ze pocket by Walter S. Tevis
- Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts
- Interglossa by Lancelot Hogben
- Jazz
- Jean Cocteau
- Jeanne D'Arc by Joseph Delter
- Journal of André Bulat
- Journey into Space by Charles Chilton
- Justine by Marquis de Sade
- Le Avventure di Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
- Le Monde à Côté by Gyp
- Les Nègres by Jean Genet
- Lewis et Irène by Paul Morand
- Look With Mother ABC Book
- Mad magazine
- Marcel Proust
- Marie Dubois by Jacques Audiberti
- Memoirs of Saint Simon by Louis de Rouvroy
- Metallurgy for Engineers
- My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin
- My Life and Loves by Frank Harris
- My Life in Art by Constantin Stanislavski
- Nest of Vipers by Tod Claymore
- New Writing
- Ninety Years Wiser
- No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase
- Or Be the Deed
- Our Nuclear Future
- La Peau de Chagrin by Honoré de Balzac
- Petrouchka by Igor Stravinsky
- Plexus by Henry Miller
- Raffles and Miss Blandish by George Orwell
- Reappraisals of History
- Rebus by Paul Gegauff
- Roberte ce soir by Pierre Klossowski
- Sanctuary
- Sermons and Soda-Water by John O'Hara
- She Might Have Been Queen by Geoffrey Bocca
- Social Aspects of Disease by A. Leslie Banks
- Spanish Crossword Puzzle Book
- Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
- Sweet Danger by Margaret Allingham
- Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe
- The Bodley Head
- The Castle on the Hill by Elizabeth Goudge
- The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by Garrett Mattingly
- The Ethics by Aristotle
- The Evil of the Day by Thomas Sterling
- The Ginger Man by J. P. Donleavy
- The Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hašek
- The Happy Prisoner by Monica Dickens
- The History of Torture
- The House of the Arrow by A. E. W. Mason
- The Jason Murders by John Newton Chance
- The Jewish Question by Jean-Paul Sartre
- The Moon & Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
- The Mystery of Jack the Ripper by Leonard Matters
- The Owls' House by Crosbie Garstin
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
- The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
- The Sittaford Mystery
- The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
- "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll
- The Weather by George Kimble & Raymond Bush
- The White Friday Murders
- The White Priory Murders
- The World of Salvador Dali by Robert Descharnes
- Their London Cousins by Lydia M. Middleton
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
- Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson
- We're Still Using That Greasy MAD Stuff (a MAD Magazine book)
- Wreck of the Running Gate
- Zazie dans le Métro by Raymond Queneau
Influence
The film's score, by Bernard Hermann, strongly influenced The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" (from the Revolver album).External link
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