Fahrenheit 451 by Francois Truffaut (1966)

The lack of success critically and financially of this first and last English language film soured Francois Truffaut from ever doing another, which is a shame.  It was the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel of the same name.  It is the story of a man whose job it is to burn books, in a society that forbids the ownership or the reading of books.  Naturally in a society that will not comply there is plenty of work, as there would be for anyone trying to outlaw illicit drug use.

Cyril Cusack and Oskar Werner in Fahrenheit 451

Montag (Oskar Werner)  is beginning to have second thoughts about his profession, while his wife is completely satisfied  and taken in by the state controlled media, featuring a seated woman called "cousin" imperiously telling her and the citizens at large what to think and to do, all from the wall TV.  It is a society that is regimented and controlled and where the possession of books is a crime.   Meanwhile his wife, Linda, (Julie Christie)  is a brainless lump of a woman who watches TV, takes too many pills, and disapproves of him because he clearly has lost his faith in the system.

The Montages enjoying TV at home

  The fact that he is pilfering books confiscated as part of his job scares her and upsets her.  Clearly she is a woman who has allowed her soul and her brains to be sucked dry by the omnipresent video screen.    When she takes an accidental overdose, the emergency medical technicians say they've seen it all before, that all they need to do is pump her out and when she wakes up she'll be brand new and with a roaring appetite.  For them obviously this is routine. In the event her appetite leads to the one and only "sex scene" in the whole film, which then is only hinted at. 

Meanwhile he has been

befriended by a woman named Clarisse (also played by Julie Christie) as he is riding home on the monorail.  She lives nearby and turns out to be a member of an underground network of book lovers.  She is an elementary schoolteacher and is suddenly sacked from her job for reasons never explained.  On a visit back to her former place of work it is clear that even her former students have been convinced to shun her.  She is obviously finding her freedom progressively constrained by her society.  She has been denounced or informed on and the noose is clearly tightening on her life as well.  In the middle of the night she has to leave quickly during yet another raid by the firemen in search of illicit books. 

Anton Diffring as Fabian the Fireman

The systematic lack of respect for privacy and the personal space of individuals is made clear.  In one scene where the firemen are doing a sweep of a public park a fireman quickly searches a woman's bag and throws its contents all over the ground.   Clearly there is no need to consider the feelings of individuals.  Individuals have no rights whatsoever.  Everything belongs to the state, including your soul and your purpose which exists only within the narrow confines of the state. 

Books, being as they are individual things, timeless and subversive things, are the enemies of uniformity. 

Anyway this turns out to be a cautionary tale about the totalitarian tendency to snuff out not only all dissent but all thought and the optimistic view that even in circumstances of crushing oppression the human spirit will find a way out, find a way to be free.

If I had to quibble with the plot just a bit, it was the part at the end with the "book people".  This was a deviation from the rather explosive ending featured in the novel by Ray Bradbury.  I just found it a bit unbelievable that anyone could commit a whole long book to memory, or would have time to do so.  And what do they do in their spare time besides memorize books?  How do they live?  But I guess it is part of artistic license that the improbable goes unexplained.  It is a great film and I highly recommend it.