FAHRENHEIT 451 Tribute to Ray Bradbury and His Lifetime Love Affair with the Movies

Based on the Bradbury book of the same name, Fahrenheit 451 was memorably translated to screen by French auteur Francois Truffaut. “Fahrenheit 451 is less science fiction than a tale of ‘once upon a time’. Truffaut presents a cozy world not so very different from our own, with television a universal father-figure pouring out reassuring messages. As Oskar Werner’s fireman hero goes about his task of destroying literature, his growing awareness of the almost human way in which books curl up and die in the flames gradually assumes the dimensions of a quest for a legendary lost treasure-movingly glimpsed as he slowly and painfully deciphers the title page of David Copperfield Here the rich nostalgic pull of the past wins out over technocracy, and the film ends, as it began, with a scene lifted right out of time.” -Tom Milne