Fahrenheit 451 (1966), directed by François Truffaut.
The film is much different in content from Ray Bradbury's book and entirely different in tone. So much so that I don't see the point in comparing them. Each must stand on its own merits.
I wouldn't have imagined the book being done Truffaut's way, but as the film is, it is a bizarre ... well, I can't say "masterpiece". It's too quirky for that. What do you call a uniquely personal experiment that shouldn't have been tried [teen dating?] but, now that we have it, is watchable and even moving?
It's as if he took several angles on the story and shuffled them together:
The skeleton of Bradbury's novel: books are forbidden because they cause trouble and unhappiness. Fireman start fires instead of putting them out.
An added layer of fascistic uniforms and police state. A dystopian vision where people take pills and zombify in front of wall-size TV screens showing political propaganda and entertainment tripe. (Hey!...) (Montag's house has a flat panel display much like the ones we use today, but with scan lines).
Despite that, it is not a bad-looking world. Spiffy monorails and neat suburban houses with woods and fields.
Odd moments of absurd humor that pop up every few minutes: the slapstick discipline at the firehouse, the security sweep of the park, and when Montag and Clarisse visit her school the glimpse of the headmistress clearly shows her to be played by the nasty fireman, Fabian. When her bag is tossed into the hallway it scuttles along the floor under it's own power. Why?
The Burning. It is disconcerting to say it, but the several book burning scenes are hypnotically beautiful to watch. The pages curling and charring as we try to read them have a tragic grandeur. Here is a list (later: sorry, dead link) of books shown in the movie. I read Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year only because it was one of the burning books.
Finally, the Book People in the woods end the movie with an entirely different mood, a feeling of escape and deliverance.
Oscar Werner has a little-boy-lost appeal that fits in with the images of a society where people are alone in public, touching themselves and their own clothes rather than each other. The flame thrower gear looks like clerical vestments and the burning is a sort of religious rite. He sins when he reads a stolen book. After a period of despair, he becomes an active apostate and eventually joins a new faith.
I read that Paul Newman, Peter O'Toole and Montgomery Clift were considered for the role and Terence Stamp was actually cast for it. I wonder what sort of film it would have been with them, especially with the latter two.
Julie Christie plays two roles. From a review at the time:
quote
...strongly supports the widely held suspicion that she cannot actually act. Though she plays two women of diametrically divergent dispositions, they seem in her portrayal to differ only in their hairdos.
I suppose standards change but that is just nonsense. I don't see how anyone can watch the movie and make those claims. The characters are nothing like each other and are played entirely differently.
Bold color design, especially in the reds. The fire engines knock you down. Nicolas Roeg was the Director of Photography. Truffaut was Hitchcock's #1 fan and he borrows some of his techniques: the track-and-zoom, the delirious dream sequence. I'm sure that's why Bernard Herrmann does the music. Exciting score, particularly during the driving and burning scenes.
We might maintain a list of films for bibliophiles starting with:
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Prospero's Books (1991)
The Ninth Gate (1999)
No text, not even opening credits, appear in the film until about the 40 minute mark. By that time the page of David Copperfield comes as a shock.