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                  |  Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
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                    | Starring: | Oskar Werner,
Julie Christie,
Cyril Cusack,
Anton Diffring,
Jeremy Spenser,
Bee Duffell,
Alex Scott,
Michael Balfour,
Anna Palk,
Ann Bell,
Caroline Hunt,
David Glover |  
                    | Director: | Francois Truffaut |  
                    | Category: | Science Fiction,
 Foreign |  
                    | Studio: | Image Entertainment |  
                    | Subtitles: |  |  
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Length: | 112 mins |  
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The classic science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury was a curious choice for one of the leading directors of the French New Wave, Fran�is Truffaut. But from the opening credits onward (spoken, not written on screen), Truffaut takes Bradbury's fascinating premise and makes it his own. The futuristic society depicted in Fahrenheit 451 is a culture without books. Firemen still race around in red trucks and wear helmets, but their job is to start fires: they ferret out forbidden stashes of books, douse them with gasoline, and make public bonfires. Oskar Werner, the star of Truffaut's Jules and Jim, plays a fireman named Montag, whose exposure to David Copperfield wakens an instinct toward reading and individual thought. (That's why books are banned--they give people too many ideas.) In an intriguing casting flourish, Julie Christie plays two roles: Montag's bored, drugged-up wife and the woman who helps kindle the spark of rebellion. The great Bernard Herrmann wrote the hard-driving music; Nicolas Roeg provided the cinematography. Fahrenheit 451 received a cool critical reception and has never quite been accepted by Truffaut fans or sci-fi buffs. 
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