"Every book burned enlightens the world," says Emerson. François Truffaut in London’s Pinewood Studios, uneasy with the language but with Nicolas Roeg’s camera and Bernard Herrmann’s violins on his side. As in Godard ("Alphaville") and Losey ("The Damned"), the Future is Now: Ray Bradbury’s visionary regime is recognizably a mid-Sixties English tangle of antennas and wall screens, with both kook and conformist played by Julie Christie. Society has become somnolent and onanistic, pacified by pills and TV programs ("brothers" and "sisters" are too intimate terms for the zombies, the state addresses them as "cousins"). The word has been banned, books are forbidden and tracked down; firemen once extinguished pyres, now they’re the crypto-Nazis providing them. Oskar Werner is one of…

Well... That whomped. Truffaut + (Future-dystopia + the 60s) = a pretty awful idea. Honestly that equation probably works just the same without throwing Truffaut into it, but as the director and a screenwriters he must be held responsible. Why are there soooo many shots of the fire truck speeding to its location? Why did it all look like a sitcom set? Why does the future look so much like the 60s? Why did no one even try to get that Frenchman to speak English? Why did that woman who set herself on fire look so much like Jack Black? Why did they even attempt to show the flying jet pack guys towards the end? And beyond that, why did…

Film 37 of The December Project

Oh dear. Julie Christie marooned in Thunderbirds? And by Francois Truffaut of all people?

Not that all of Fahrenheit 451 is that bad, but the camp, wooden acting in much of it is spectacularly inappropriate for an adaptation of a moving dystopian classic. It's not even funny because the context is too serious (unlike an early Doctor Who, say) and most scenes are not quite bad enough to be amusing regardless. And that's despite the lack of convincing explanation of the regime's ideology, and several gaping plot-holes (Why does resistance-reader Clarisse trust Fireman Montag in the first place? How does a man go from burning books for a living to calling them his family…

Adaptations of acclaimed literary works are often treated unfairly. Those who have read the source material have strict expectations for how the story should be represented. But the truth is everyone perceives a story differently, so we must be open minded when viewing an adaptation because the direction the film takes may be great in its own distinctive way. I have read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and I found myself being prematurely critical because I had what I wanted set in my mind; but I stopped and gave Francois Truffaut's unique representation and chance and viewed it on its own terms.

As a standalone project, without the weight of its source material, Fahrenheit 451 is visually pleasing, but lifeless. It…

"Every book burned enlightens the world," says Emerson. François Truffaut in London’s Pinewood Studios, uneasy with the language but with Nicolas Roeg’s camera and Bernard Herrmann’s violins on his side. As in Godard ("Alphaville") and Losey ("The Damned"), the Future is Now: Ray Bradbury’s visionary regime is recognizably a mid-Sixties English tangle of antennas and wall screens, with both kook and conformist played by Julie Christie. Society has become somnolent and onanistic, pacified by pills and TV programs ("brothers" and "sisters" are too intimate terms for the zombies, the state addresses them as "cousins"). The word has been banned, books are forbidden and tracked down; firemen once extinguished pyres, now they’re the crypto-Nazis providing them. Oskar Werner is one of…