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From: turner@ucbesvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Truffaut Degree Zero
Message-ID: <6100015@ucbesvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 4-Mar-84 05:33:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbesvax.6100015
Posted: Sun Mar  4 05:33:00 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Mar-84 09:41:26 EST
Organization: UC Berkeley, EE/SESM
Lines: 23
Nf-ID: #N:ucbesvax:6100015:000:1430
Nf-From: ucbesvax!turner    Mar  4 02:33:00 1984

The mention of Fahrenheit 451 in "double features redux" reminded me of
it--unpleasant memory it was, too.  Does anyone agree with me when I say
that it was one of the most revoltingly inaccurate adaptations of a novel
ever committed to celluloid?  I mean, they got *everything* wrong, down to
the color of Montague's hair.  Oscar Werner--wotta zombie!  And the mangling
of the scene at the end--pedants mooning about, mouthing their memorized
books in the purity of light snow--where the book has the gritty realism
of literate outcasts by the railroad tracks, backlit by a nuclear war.
Truffaut shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near that project.  A total
waste of Bradbury's finest novel.

Especially considering that we now have the SFX to do it straight, right
down the night chase scene with procaine-needle-fanged robotic hunting hound,
Bradbury's most chilling creation by far.  (The 1984 helicopter replacement
in Truffaut's botch left me quite cold.)  The book is night-moody in
atmosphere, but Truffaut sets all the night scenes during the day--muggy,
overcast washed-out days, too.  He even substitutes a monorail for the
underground train-station--on a continent worm-eaten with underground rail!
Pure Sci-Fi Kitsch.  How could a citizen of a formerly Nazi-occupied country
do such a lousy job of portraying institutionalized book-burning?  That's
what I want to know.
---
Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)