A review of the 1966 Fahrenheit 451 film

The adaptation to the movie of the book Fahrenheit 451 left me with a bittersweet taste. I can tell it was a rushed project and the directors gave little thought to detail. Maybe they didn’t have a big enough budget, but I can only say that it left me with that bittersweet feeling. From the acting and casting of characters and the following through the original sequences of the book and the special effects it left me wanting more.

Acting wise I can say that the character of Montag was too loose. I could perfectly picture Montag as a quiet guy with no opinions on anything whatsoever, and that is the point of introducing him that way in the book, it is written like that in the book to see his progress, but in the movie, he already is conscious of his way of thinking and could easily debate the golden question which is are you happy? We barely see Montag do any progress in the movie, we don’t see his desperate attempts to eat the entire world once he discovered the power that knowledge gave him, we rarely see him in awe at the new world that has been opened for him.

As for the acting of the other characters, I can say that they were only bi-dimensional, except for Linda (or Mildred, as her name was in the book). The actress did manage to portray a very well-done character, she gave Linda the same personality that Ray Bradbury wanted to write. From her addiction to wall screens to the sense of not-minding the overdose she gave herself like it was all part of the natural order of things.

As for Clarisse, I was very disappointed by the casting. In the book, she was supposed to be around 17 years of age and in the movie was a full-grown woman who worked and paid taxes. Nevertheless, she did manage to portray the character she was given. In the movie, we have that she is a recurring character that from time to time also acts as a catalyzer, whereas in the book Clarisse, only acts as a one-time sudden realization that Montag isn’t happy, that he is chained to the routine of working and wasting time, as I said in my previous essay, he wasn’t satisfying his innate hunger for knowledge.

The movie and the book differ in plenty of ways. First, we have that Clarisse doesn’t die and she actually formed part of the secret society of book-people. We never got to see the

mechanical hound, instead, we saw a poorly green-screened scene of firemen flying around with jetpacks. I understand that green screens weren’t yet as developed as they are now so I respect that strange scene taken out from a fever dream. The third thing that didn’t appear in

the movie was Faber, the professor who shows more in-depth the world of books to Montag.

The trustworthiness of the movie, as I said before, left me wanting more.

Overall the movie was entertaining but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, and most likely won’t talk about it because no one has ever brought up that movie in a conversation before and I plan for it to stay that way. And as always the book was better than the movie.