In a dystopian future where books are illegal and everything is fireproof, Montag (Oskar Werner) is a fireman, part of a force that burns books. He is well respected and his chief (Cyril Cusack) tells him he is soon to be promoted. His wife, Linda (Julie Christie) is a normal member of society, taking drugs and watching TV obsessively. But then he meets Clarisse (also Julie Christie), which stirs his dissatisfaction and makes him curious about what is in the books.
Ray Bradbury’s superb novel, Fahrenheit 451, along with Orwell’s 1984, Zamyatin’s We, and Huxley’s Brave New World, defines literary dystopian fiction. A political statement, as they all are, it paints a grim picture of the future that could result if we allow censorship to grow and prosper. Taking a different approach than Orwell, Bradbury’s tale is a fable, letting impossible extremes emphasize his point. It doesn’t lay down a starkly real world as it is no more important that this world could never exist than it is in the Tortoise and the Hare. In both cases, we get the point.
Bradbury has always said that his works are easy to convert into films, if only the filmmakers would take them unchanged and stuff them into the camera. In this, he is mistaken. Bradbury’s talent is with words. He is a poet that makes sentence dance for him, forming fantastical images in the reader’s mind. Fahrenheit 451 is a particularly difficult work to prepare for the screen, since film has always had an awkward time with fables and poetry. But, it can be done.
That said, the translation isn’t done here. The film Fahrenheit 451 is the result of vanity, ignorance, and a lack of skill. Most of that is on the head of director François Truffaut, but there is plenty of blame to go around. At least, when it was over, Truffaut knew he had failed. When I look over how this project was developed, I’m surprised they even ended up with developed film stock.
Truffaut, a major figure in the French new wave movement, was an originator of the auteur theory that stated that a film should reflect its director’s experiences, style, and point of view. (Truffaut initially thought of this as a mode of criticism; it was Andrew Sarris that called it a theory.) The director, according to the theory, is like a novelist, and all of the mechanisms of filmmaking, the cameras, the film, the sets, and all of the people, are just his pen. Those who are familiar with my writings know I am contemptuous of the auteur theory, and those who hold to it. It is an ego-trip for insecure directors, and forgets that film is a collaborative art form.
Naturally, the auteur Truffaut wants to be involved in all parts of the filmmaking process, no matter how unqualified he might be for many of them, so that the project will have his imprint. So, naturally, he worked on the script. One tiny problem pops up there. You see, Truffaut didn’t speak English. Fahrenheit 451 was his first, and only, English language production, and it shows. The dialog is something I’d expect to get after running Bradbury’s story through an online translator, first into French, and then back into English. He doesn’t get the metaphors wrong (which an online translator would do—don’t want to be too hard on the guy…) but rather removes them in favor of bland, simplistic, third grade writing. Writing is an art, and if you don’t have the tools, leave it to someone who does.
After losing better choices, Truffaut cast Oskar Werner, an Austrian stage actor and director who had worked with Truffaut before (and as an auteur, such connections are more important than who is actually right for the role) as Montag. The fact that Werner had a strong accent, difficult to explain in the story, did not bother Truffaut. What did was Werner’s decision to create his own character, something no auteur could allow. The two fought each other through the production, with Werner playing the part his way, and Truffaut cutting out anything that couldn’t nominally be stuffed into his narrow view of the character. By the end, the two hated each other, and Werner purposely tried to sabotage the film. Countering, Truffaut shot scenes with doubles. Both men were far more concerned with themselves than the production. Naturally, the performance that ended up onscreen is a mess, lacking life, and any kind of direction.
Other poor decisions can be seen everywhere, although how many were Truffaut’s, and how many were producer Lewis M. Allen’s, I can’t say. One of the most glaring is the double casting of Julie Christie to hammer home the contrasting natures of the two female characters. In what should be a drama, this only draws attention to itself as a gimmick. But then I wonder if this is a drama. Taking it to be a comedy is the only way I can explain the second double casting, that of Anton Diffring as both the fireman Fabian and as the headmistress of the children’s school. Yup, the headmistress is played by a man in drag. I’m baffled on what Truffaut thought this was saying. Since there is also a handshake-salute that would have fit into the Marx Brother’s Duck Soup, it sure seems like the film is a comedy. Additionally, there is the television play that Linda watches and believes she’s actually part of, where two men blabber on for several minutes about seating and sleeping arrangements for a party. It is undoubtedly supposed to be funny, and is the only scene worth watching in the picture. Too bad most of the rest of Fahrenheit 451 is so deadly serious.
One of the largest mistakes (Can I really say that this one is larger than all the others? It’s so hard to tell when there are so many mistakes.) is ignoring the fairy tale nature of the material. The story and setting has enormous holes (why can everyone read? What do they learn in school? How does the wholly illiterate society function? Why do the firemen know the names of all the authors—do they stop to read before they burn?), which is not problematic in the book, as it is concerned with creating a poetic image. But in a movie, shot with drab normality (except for an increase in the color red) the improbability of the world is glaring. Either the shooting style should demonstrate the unreal nature of the world (as in The Wizard of Oz, Sin City, and Sleepy Hollow), or those holes need to be filled in. As this was Truffaut’s first film in color (perhaps he shouldn’t have tried so many new things at once…), I’m not surprised he lacked the skill, the eye, and the imagination, to do something interesting with the imagery.
What we are given is policemen with jetpacks. In a film where everything looks like the ’50s and most mechanical devices belong in a ’30s film (like the phones), there are jetpacks. The guys using them don’t do anything, which is odd, but there they are, stripping away whatever small shreds of integrity remain.
One good decision was hiring Bernard Herrmann, best known for his work with Hitchcock, to write the score. The music is tense, and romantic, and put to poor use, often heralding a nonexistent climax.
With a stripped down story, crude dialog, un-engaging acting, and a failure to understand anything more about the novel than it has book burning, Fahrenheit 451 is a monument to arrogant filmmaking.