Fahrenheit 451 (1966 film)

Infobox_Film
name = Fahrenheit 451


director = François Truffaut
producer = Lewis M. Allen
writer = Jean-Louis Ricard
François Truffaut|
Ray Bradbury (Novel)
starring = Julie Christie
Oskar Werner
Cyril Cusack| distributor = Universal Pictures
music = Bernard Herrmann
cinematography = Nicolas Roeg
released = November 14, 1966 (USA)
runtime = 112 min
imdb_id = 0060390

"Fahrenheit 451" is a 1966 film of a dystopian future, based on the novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury.

According to Bradbury the novel is not about censorship but about how television destroys interest in reading literature. [Boyle Johnston, Amy E. [http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted/16524/ "Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit the monster51 Misinterpreted"] , "LA Weekly", May 30, 2007.] 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 and was his only English-language film.

The film starred Oskar Werner as Montag and Julie Christie who was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role award for the dual roles of Linda (Mildred) Montag and Clarisse; having long red and short blonde hair respectively and being photographed through different coloured filters. Funding for the film became available when both Christie and Werner, both in popular films at the time, became interested in the project.

The film was Universal Pictures first European production that was followed by "A Countess From Hong Kong".

Deviations from the novel

The movie differed somewhat from the novel.

*Clarisse survives throughout the film and accompanies Montag when he leaves the city.
*The role played by Faber is reduced significantly, appearing only briefly in one scene as an old man who is searched for books in a park as the cinematography surrounds him with black borders.
*The book Montag secretly takes home is changed from the Bible in the novel to a book on Kaspar Hauser in the film.
*The obsession with fast and often fatal driving that permeates the novel is nowhere in the film. Only three automobiles are seen in the film; a Jaguar S-Type, a Commer Imp van, and art director Syd Cain's red Excalibur roadster.
*Once Montag begins reading, the machines of his society (represented by the Mechanical Hound in the book) turn against him. In the film this is represented by his being unable to go "up" the fireman's pole and the door of his home no longer opening automatically.
*The nuclear war in the book is absent, though one of Linda's friends talks about her husband being called up by the military.
*The film adds a pursuit of Montag with jet packs and an attack from a machine gun firing helicopter that is televised.

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.Fact|date=August 2008

Production

The film was shot at Pinewood Studios in England, with the monorail exterior scene taken at the French SAFEGE test track, in Châteneuf-sur-Loire near Orléans, France (since dismantled). The film featured the Alton housing estate in Roehampton, South London and also Edgcumbe Park in Crowthorne, Berkshire. The final scene of the Book People was filmed in a rare and unexpected snowstorm.

The production work was done in French, as Truffaut spoke virtually no English, but co-wrote the screenplay with Jean-Louis Ricard. Truffaut expressed disappointment with the often stilted and unnatural English-language dialogue. He was much happier with the version that was dubbed into French.

To provide a taste of what life is like in a non-literate culture, the opening credits are spoken rather than being displayed in type.

Tony Walton did costumes and production design whilst Syd Cain did art direction.

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. The DVD commentary suggests that many or all of the books used came from Truffaut's personal library. One of the books, though barely visible, is "Fahrenheit 451" itself.

*"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" 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
*"Dom Juan" by Molière
*"Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev
*"Gargantua and Pantagruel" by François Rabelais
*"Gasparo Hauser"
*"Geheimnisse der Fürstin von Cadignan" by Honoré de Balzac
*"Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell
*"Holy Deadlock" by A. P. Herbert
*"Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery" by Freeman Wills Crofts
*"Interglossa" by Lancelot Hogben
*"In ze pocket" (The Hustler) by Walter S. Tevis
*"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 Deux Anglaises et le Continent" by Henri-Pierre Roché
*"Les Nègres" by Jean Genet
*"Lewis et Irène" by Paul Morand
*"Look With Mother ABC Book"
*"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 Miller Middleton
*"Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll
*"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 compilation)
*"Wreck of the Running Gate"
*"Zazie dans le Métro" by Raymond Queneau

Music

According to an introduction by Ray Bradbury to a CD of a rerecording of the film score by William Stromberg conducting the Moscow Symphony Orchestra Bradbury had suggested Bernard Herrmann to Truffaut. Bradbury had visited the set of "Torn Curtain" meeting both Alfred Hitchcock and Herrmann before Herrmann left the film. When Truffaut contacted Bradbury for a conference about his book, Bradbury recommended Herrmann as Bradbury knew Truffaut had written a detailed book about Hitchcock. [Bradbury, Ray "Bernard Herrmann and Fahrenheit 451" liner notes for CD 5 June 2007]

When Herrmann asked Truffaut why he was chosen over "modern" composers such as the director's friends Pierre Boulez or Karlheinz Stockhausen, the director replied that "They'll give me music of the twentieth century, but you'll give me music of the twenty first!" [Gunther Kogehehn, "Fahrenheit 451" liner notes" Tribute CD.]

Herrmann used a score of only string instruments, harp, xylophone, vibraphone, marimba, and glockenspiel. As with "Torn Curtain", Herrmann refused the studio's request to do a title song.

Trivia

A great number (10.000) of books burned in this movie were obtained for £1 each, from a young girl who had just recently obtained them in gift previously the same day. [Bookride [http://www.bookride.com/2008/06/tall-tales-from-trade.html "Tall Tales from the Trade"] , June 27, 2008, "Bookride.com"]

Notes

ee also

*Fahrenheit 451 (2008 film)

External links

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