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3,191 Ratings

Fahrenheit 451

United Kingdom, 1966

Sci-Fi, Drama

Synopsis

In a dystopian future where the government has outlawed all books, it is a fireman’s job to make sure they are all burned. When one firefighter meets a young book-lover, he begins to question his actions.

Fahrenheit 451 Directed by François Truffaut

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Awards & Festivals

Venice Film Festival

1966

Warsaw International Film Festival

2001

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Cast & Crew

Articles from the Notebook

The Best of Movie Poster of the Day: Part 16

A quarterly round-up of the most popular posters on the Movie Poster of the Day Tumblr.

Notebook Soundtrack Mix #4: “Fragments of the Mirror: The Music of Bernard Herrmann”

A kaleidoscopic compilation of soundtracks by Herrmann presents an overview of this unique composer’s wide-ranging and influential style.

Critics reviews

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With the help of Bernard Herrmann’s score and Nicolas Roeg’s cinematography, Truffaut turns the schematic source material into a profoundly suggestive poem in which the written word itself becomes a character, as a boy in a rural shelter recites a haunting passage from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston while the snow begins to fall.

Geoffrey O'Brien

July 03, 2017

Fahrenheit 451" is a drastic change in direction (pun intended), and a worthy one. It’s Truffaut’s first color film, and he revels in the new creative dimension that color opens for him. As a futuristic science-fiction film, the project opens the door to abstractions—visual as well as intellectual—that had been remote from Truffaut’s earlier films. Critics and viewers didn’t forgive him for surprising them; the film remains audaciously surprising even now.

Richard Brody

January 27, 2015

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Marvellously simple and specific, like all the best things in Fahrenheit 451, this ending is a heroic enlargement of the film’s range. It is as though Truffaut has drawn on everything he knows about cinema to express unshakable loyalty to the written word.

Penelope Houston

December 01, 1966

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What are people saying?

Duncan Gray's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451
Duncan Gray

Truffaut isn't the man for futuristic dystopias—see Alphaville instead—but from an auteur theory perspective, it's fascinating to see his unmistakable stamp applied to the material. With Hermann on music and Nic Roeg doing the photography, there's plenty of sensory joy. But as an allegory about beleaguered intellectuals, it's a bit self-righteous. Even auteur theorists need better screenplays sometimes.
December 20, 2019 18:10
- 2
- 0
Richmond Hill's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451
Richmond Hill

A rather cartoonish interpretation which thankfully eschews the heavier pitfalls of pro-free thought and intellectualism but spends too much of its time in distracted - often distracting - gimmickry and experimentation of material form. It fitfully works and has some effective sequences and modes, but whether Truffaut was simpatico with the story remains unclear.
July 30, 2019 18:51
- 4
- 0
ASHES IN THE HOURGLASS's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451
ASHES IN THE HOURGLASS

It's not awful but it was just really uninvolving. My biggest problem is that Truffaut's love for Hitchcock, specifically Vertigo, is all over this film, to the point of making me want to watch that instead. From the theme of memory, the similar music by Bernard Hermann, the casting of an actress in two roles, the dream sequence, all these things remind me too much of Hitchcock's masterpiece. It lacks an identity.
October 11, 2019 10:12
- 5
- 0
anarresti's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451
anarresti

Truffaut turned (what is now) the 1953 dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451 and made (what is now) a dystopian film classic.The book was written during the McCarthy era and, in a prophetic way, would be censored or banned on a few occasions in the USA. The film had its own atmosphere but the same awkward sense of oppression and strangeness. And the title itself would inspire Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
January 10, 2020 05:27
- 2
- 0
Pierluigi Puccini's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451
Pierluigi Puccini

Truffaut attemps to make a Hitchcock film. the result is average, far from his best works. Julie Christie is beautiful (as always) and gives a surprisingly good double role. Oskar Werner does a fine job as the self absorbed fireman. overall an interesting dystopian fantasy.
March 31, 2009 21:31
- 1
- 0
Ethan's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451
Ethan

Truffaut brings Ray Bradbury's literary classic to vibrant life in this brilliant screen adaptation that perfectly captures the nightmarish atmosphere of the source material.
January 24, 2019 18:47
- 3
- 0
Renton47's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451
Renton47

Cheeky, far from the fascist nightmare of 1984, 451 is at least equally concerned with the faux liberation promised to those who think they've escaped Plato's cave. I will assume that being a cinephile Truffaut saw the dilemma inherent in those who claim authorship of their life through the texts of others. It is a stylised oddity, optimistic in its inevitable revolutions but convinced of their worthlessness.
April 17, 2018 07:52
- 0
- 0
www.letterboxd.com/xescie/lists/'s rating of the film Fahrenheit 451
www.letterboxd.com/xescie/lists/

"I've wanted to redo Fahrenheit 451 ever since it came out in 1966, because Truffaut left out so much from the novel. I sat bolt upright when I was told that Warner Brothers wanted to make the new version with Mel Gibson" — Ray Bradbury, Playboy May 1996
October 16, 2017 00:02
- 0
- 0

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Fahrenheit 451

Synopsis

Awards & Festivals

Cast & Crew

François Truffaut Director and Screenplay

Oskar Werner Cast

Julie Christie Cast

Cyril Cusack Cast

Anton Diffring Cast

Jean-Louis Richard Screenplay

David Rudkin Screenplay

Helen Scott Screenplay

Articles from the Notebook

The Best of Movie Poster of the Day: Part 16

Notebook Soundtrack Mix #4: “Fragments of the Mirror: The Music of Bernard Herrmann”

Critics reviews

What are people saying?

Duncan Gray's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451

Richmond Hill's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451

ASHES IN THE HOURGLASS's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451

anarresti's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451

Pierluigi Puccini's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451

Ethan's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451

Renton47's rating of the film Fahrenheit 451

www.letterboxd.com/xescie/lists/'s rating of the film Fahrenheit 451

In these lists

Related films

Alphaville

Murder in a Blue World

Mozart

It Happened Here

The Handmaid's Tale

1984

Nineteen Eighty-Four

THX 1138

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Jules and Jim

Fatherland

Fahrenheit 451

Synopsis

Synopsis

Awards & Festivals

Cast & Crew

François Truffaut Director and Screenplay

Oskar Werner Cast

Julie Christie Cast

Cyril Cusack Cast

Anton Diffring Cast

Jean-Louis Richard Screenplay

David Rudkin Screenplay

Helen Scott Screenplay

Articles from the Notebook

The Best of Movie Poster of the Day: Part 16

Notebook Soundtrack Mix #4: “Fragments of the Mirror: The Music of Bernard Herrmann”

What are people saying?

In these lists

Related films

Metropolis

Fritz Lang Germany, 1927

Alphaville

Murder in a Blue World

Mozart

It Happened Here

The Handmaid's Tale

1984

Nineteen Eighty-Four

THX 1138

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Jules and Jim

Fatherland