Fahrenheit 451

First adaptation of the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel of the same name. Although Syd Cain’s by-the-book scenography doesn’t make a huge visual impact, the film is characterized by an interesting blend of level-headed social critique and lyricism (in particular, the scenes involving the book people turn out to be rather poetic).

The director’s primary virtue is his ability to infuse his own love for freedom of speech and for culture in general into the film, translating it into an unsurprising condemnation of any sort of totalitarianism or distortion of information. Both the literary source as well as this film version gives us a ruthless tirade against the degeneration of the mass media, which are considered as entities in the service of power, as well as dangerous instruments of standardization.

The pace drags at times and the performances are lukewarm, to say the least, but on the conceptual level, this minor Truffaut film hits the mark.