I love sci-fi movies, and especially those real sci-fi movies that rely on idea rather than action. I was looking forward to seeing this and finally caught it, but was really really disappointed.
I think this was the first Truffaut movie I've seen so I had no idea what his style is. I've seen some Nicolas Roeg movies, so in that department I had expectations.
The beginning is great, altho somewhat theatrical, but the idea of announced credits with some nice visual trickery and the concrete suburbs of 60s London was a great starter for the movie, I was really excited. Too bad it was all downhill after this.
First off, Oskar Werner is horrible in the lead role, just amazingly bad. I just kept thinking how the movie would've been if they'd cast someone with even a little bit of charisma in the role. Werner was so uninspired and tired all through the movie. Afterwards I read that he and Truffaut didn't really see eye to eye and it shows, it really shows. I was also distracted by his accent. I didn't know him before, so I thought he was french, but at times his accent was clearly German, I don't know if he was supposed to be British, German, French ...
Julie Christie does a good job, but the double role is somewhat weird. She's good as Clarisse, but the role as Montags wife is a bit so-so. There doesn't seem to be a clear idea behind the double role. Cyril Cusack does by far the best role in the movie, he's the only one who seems to have a clear idea of his character. Anton Diffring's main character is left as a shadow of what it could be and why was he cast as the headmistress also? It looked as a joke when he/she peaked from the window. I'd understand this choice of using just a few performers to portray many people if Truffaut had deliberately wanted to show that people are the same mass and alike, but this idea is not really executed very well.
The whole script is a bit lacklustre in my opinion. The idea and premise are very interesting, but what ended up on screen is just dull and uninteresting.
There are times when the movie looks good, I would've liked to see more of this early spring concrete suburbia. But instead you get to see the country side. Nothing really wrong with that either, but the locations don't really match, you get no idea how the world really looks in this dystopian future. The monorail gets amazingly lot of screen time, Truffaut must've thought it looked really futuristic. The scenes in the cafe in the city (or something, I don't know), look very much like a studio and are not that great really.
You also see a lot of the fire truck driving. This looks actually quite comical as the firemen are standing stiff and just holding a pole with one hand while the truck is driving really fast.
I wasn't too impressed by Nicolas Roeg's cinematography either. They must've had the worst dolly grip in the world as the camera was shaking like crazy when ever there was a moving camera. Then there's this one single scene that introduces a split screen kind of effect, covering the other side of the screen with black matte. What was that about?
Such a frustrating movie to watch. You want it to get better as it goes, but it never does.
I think this was the first Truffaut movie I've seen so I had no idea what his style is. I've seen some Nicolas Roeg movies, so in that department I had expectations.
The beginning is great, altho somewhat theatrical, but the idea of announced credits with some nice visual trickery and the concrete suburbs of 60s London was a great starter for the movie, I was really excited. Too bad it was all downhill after this.
First off, Oskar Werner is horrible in the lead role, just amazingly bad. I just kept thinking how the movie would've been if they'd cast someone with even a little bit of charisma in the role. Werner was so uninspired and tired all through the movie. Afterwards I read that he and Truffaut didn't really see eye to eye and it shows, it really shows. I was also distracted by his accent. I didn't know him before, so I thought he was french, but at times his accent was clearly German, I don't know if he was supposed to be British, German, French ...
Julie Christie does a good job, but the double role is somewhat weird. She's good as Clarisse, but the role as Montags wife is a bit so-so. There doesn't seem to be a clear idea behind the double role. Cyril Cusack does by far the best role in the movie, he's the only one who seems to have a clear idea of his character. Anton Diffring's main character is left as a shadow of what it could be and why was he cast as the headmistress also? It looked as a joke when he/she peaked from the window. I'd understand this choice of using just a few performers to portray many people if Truffaut had deliberately wanted to show that people are the same mass and alike, but this idea is not really executed very well.
The whole script is a bit lacklustre in my opinion. The idea and premise are very interesting, but what ended up on screen is just dull and uninteresting.
There are times when the movie looks good, I would've liked to see more of this early spring concrete suburbia. But instead you get to see the country side. Nothing really wrong with that either, but the locations don't really match, you get no idea how the world really looks in this dystopian future. The monorail gets amazingly lot of screen time, Truffaut must've thought it looked really futuristic. The scenes in the cafe in the city (or something, I don't know), look very much like a studio and are not that great really.
You also see a lot of the fire truck driving. This looks actually quite comical as the firemen are standing stiff and just holding a pole with one hand while the truck is driving really fast.
I wasn't too impressed by Nicolas Roeg's cinematography either. They must've had the worst dolly grip in the world as the camera was shaking like crazy when ever there was a moving camera. Then there's this one single scene that introduces a split screen kind of effect, covering the other side of the screen with black matte. What was that about?
Such a frustrating movie to watch. You want it to get better as it goes, but it never does.