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Plot Summary
Ray Bradbury’s best-selling science fiction masterpiece about a future without books takes on a chillingly realistic dimension in this film classic directed by one of the most important screen innovators of all time, the late François Truffaut . Julie Christie stars in the challenging dual role of Oskar Werner's pleasure-seeking conformist wife, Linda, and his rebellious, book-collecting mistress, Clarisse. Montag (Oskar Werner), a regimented fireman in charge of burning the forbidden volumes, meets a revolutionary school teacher who dares to read. Suddenly he finds himself a hunted fugitive, forced to choose not only between two women, but between personal safety and intellectual freedom. Truffaut's first English language production is an eerie fable where mankind becomes the ultimate evil.
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Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews
TOMATOMETER
81%- Reviews Counted: 32
- Fresh: 26
- Rotten: 6
- Average Rating: 7.4/10
Top Critics' Reviews
Rotten: Holy smoke! What a pretentious and pedantic production he has made.
Fresh: With a serious and even terrifying theme, this excursion into science fiction has been thoughtfully directed by Francois Truffaut and there is adequate evidence of light touches to bring welcome and needed relief to a sombre and scarifying subject.
Fresh: Truffaut's movie clearly suffered from a troubled shoot - Truffaut didn't actually know English - so his oddball take on the material succeeds in only fits and bursts.
Fresh: An underrated film, perhaps because it is less science fiction than a tale of 'once upon a time.'
Customer Reviews
Massively underrated
I've never understood why this great scifi (ish) movie gets so little love. I mean, some critics and film people have caught onto it over the decades, not least cuz it's one of those movies you can dissect and discuss until the cows come home, every single scene and sound is such an interesting choice. But audiences continue to pooh-pooh or just ignore it, and I just don't get that. Since the first time I saw it -- and believe me I've watched it many times -- I've felt it's one of the best scifi movies ever made -- quirky, very un-scifi in a lot of ways, but one of the best. Like the way, say, A Scanner Darkly is not very scifi and yet one of the best scifi movies of recent years. I think it just falls between the cracks: Bradbury fans don't like it cuz Truffaut so changed the story to make it work on the screen (and greatly improved on it in my opinion, much as I like Bradbury); Truffaut groupies don't like it cuz it's scifi and why the heck was the great auteur messing with such a low genre; and general scifi audiences don't like it cuz it doesn't have more than a few scant seconds of the usual scifi whiz bang and FX, and those look almost intentionally low-budget and half-hearted. But it's such a beautiful, smart, touching film, and I think just about every decision made in it is brilliant filmmaking. Oh, and Bernard Hermann's score is one of his best, and that's really saying something.
Sometimes Disappointing Adaptation
Misses certain elements of the book such as Faber, Mechanical Hound and the sheer paranoia of Montag on the run. If you read the book go ahead and watch....or just read the book again. I think someone should tackle a remake in 2012. I bet it would be very nicely done.
a sound flick
Listen to the music. It is what makes the film.
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