Movie #225........................."Fahrenheit 451"

Movie #225 "Fahrenheit 451" is NOT better than the book ---- doesn't come close, even though it is highly respected with a director Francois Truffaut. Yes, there are some pretty moments, but most of it is so slowly paced, it makes "No Country for Old Man" look faster (yikes!) I guess what I'm saying is, like everything, it shows its age. It's almost laughable the way some parts of it are filmed. There are long passages where single copies of books are burned ---- I wanted to scream at the screen: move on, we've got the idea!!! Julie Christie, though pretty, is so cold is most films I've seen her in (Doctor Zhivago comes to mind), although I think she actually comes across more human and warm in "Heaven Can Wait", so she does nothing to draw the audience in and she plays two parts!~ Oscar Werner is like a stick as he walks around as Montag ------ and where's the guts of Bradbury's book here? the more complex side of the Captain, or Faber or the mechanical dogs? Or the porch discussion by Clarisse ---- actually the guts of Clarisse's character in the book is removed here. Nope, I didn't buy it, even though it's Truffaut's. It no longer deserves to be a classic, but the book does.




You rated this movie: 3.0
Fahrenheit 451
(1966) UR
All printed materials are destroyed and banned, and firemen start fires in this adaptation of author Ray Bradbury's cautionary near-future parable of an oppressive society in which free thought is verboten. Starring Oskar Werner as the conflicted, book-burning Montag and Julie Christie in a dual role, the sci-fi drama was the only English-language film to spring from the mind of French auteur François Truffaut.