Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 was Truffaut's first film in color, and his only film in English (he was, for a while, attached to filming Bonnie and Clyde, which I would have loved to have seen). It is, of course, based on the famous dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, in which firemen don't put out fires, they start them. They burn books.

Book burning is a particularly odious image, mostly associated with Nazis, but pops up every once in a while even in our freedom-loving U.S.A. The opening scene shows a squad of firemen, wearing kind of odd, Victorian-style helmets, riding a vehicle that is both futuristic and antique, to a home where someone is hiding books. Montag (Oskar Werner) is an expert at finding hidden books--false TV sets are a typical place. The firemen then gather the offending material and burn it.

In this society of Bradbury's creation, printed material is banned (the opening credits are spoken, not typed). Citizens are kept docile by drugs and TV, and told that books lead to unhappiness. Of course, what the government fears about books is that they have alternative ideas, but they have persuaded most that books are dangerous to their well-being.

Montag is in line for a promotion, but a few things start to happen. He meets a vivacious neighbor (Julie Christie, who also plays his vapid wife). Then he becomes intrigued by the books he burns. His captain, Cyril Cusack, says this happens to the best of firemen, but he insists that books are rubbish. But Montag starts to read David Copperfield, and then gets hooked. Soon his house is full of books.

Truffaut handles this high-concept material mostly straight, without filigree or tricks. There are a few inside jokes--in one bonfire, we see a copy of Cahiers du Cinema with Truffaut on the cover--but for the most part this is straight ahead science-fiction, and at times elegantly exciting. A taut sequence in which a woman is found with a hidden library, what Cusack calls the dream find of any firemen, is magnified by her insistence on being burned with the books, an image that Montag can not shake.

The science-fiction elements are handled somewhat strangely. As I said about the uniforms, though this is set in the future, we don't know how far ahead. For all I know Bradbury may have been referencing the increasing cultural illiteracy of his own time. A few things, such as wall-sized televisions, have the aura of the new, but otherwise there are no "Jetsons"-style gadgets, except for some jetpacks, which are shown in cheesy rear projection.

But this film is not about technical wizardry. Especially noted is a scene in a school, where children are drilled not in their ABCs but in multiplication tables (the old woman recites them mockingly while going up in flames). Which brings me to a question--are people taught to read? Montag stumbles through David Copperfield, reading as a first-grader might. But clearly he knows how to read--how was he taught? Are there no instruction manuals? Apparently not. It's a bit of a puzzle, but certainly nothing to impinge on the excellence of this film.