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Guy Montag: [reading from David Copperfield] David Copperfield. Chapter one. I am born. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born, as I have been informed and believe on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry simultaneously.
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The Captain: Listen to me, Montag. Once to each fireman, at least once in his career, he just itches to know what these books are all about. He just aches to know. Isn't that so?
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The Captain: Trouble between you and the Pole, Montag?
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Book Lady: Play the man, Master Ridley. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace as I trust shall never be put out.
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Guy Montag: Fahrenheit four five one is the temperature at which book paper catches fire and starts to burn.
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The Captain: And the philosophers, they're even worse than the novels! All of them saying the same thing: "Only I am right! The others are all idiots!"
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The Captain: What's going on?
Fireman: This house has been condemned, it's to be burnt with the books immediately.
The Captain: Burning the books is one thing, burning the house is another altogether.
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Clarisse: Is it true that a long time ago, firemen used to put out fires and not burn books?
Guy Montag: Your uncle is right, you are light in the head, put out fires? Houses have always been fireproof.
Clarisse: Ours isn't...
Guy Montag: Well, it should be condemned, destroyed, and you'll have to move to one that is.
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The Captain: Come along.
Book Lady: No!
The Captain: What do you want, sarcasm?
Book Lady: I want to die as I've lived.
The Captain: You got that from there no doubt.
Book Lady: These books were alive, they spoke to me!
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Clarisse: But why do you burn books?
Guy Montag: Books make people unhappy, they make them anti-social.
Clarisse: Do you think I'm anti-social?
Guy Montag: Why do you ask?
Clarisse: Well...I'm a teacher, not quite actually, I'm still on probation. I was called to the administration office today, and I don't think I said the right things. I'm not at all happy about my answers.
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Guy Montag: Well, it's a job just like any other. Good work with lots of variety. Monday, we burn Miller; Tuesday, Tolstoy; Wednesday, Walt Whitman; Friday, Faulkner; and Saturday and Sunday, Schopenhauer and Sartre. We burn them to ashes and then burn the ashes. That's our official motto.
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Guy Montag: To learn how to find, one must first learn how to hide.
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The Captain: You see, it's... it's no good, Montag. We've all got to be alike. The only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal.
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Guy Montag: These books are my family.
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Guy Montag: We burn them to ashes and then burn the ashes. That's our official motto.
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Guy Montag: [reading from dictionary] Rhinoceros: any of certain large, powerful, thick-skinned perissodactyl mammals of the family Rhinocerotidae.
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Clarisse: You don't like books, then.
Guy Montag: Do you like the rain?
Clarisse: Yes, I adore it.
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Guy Montag: You must've said something that...
Clarisse: Oh I never got along well with the staff...I...don't always stick to the times tables...well we have fun in my class, and they don't like that.
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Book Person: 'Martian Chronicles': I'm The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.
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The Captain: The books have nothing to say.
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Fireman: [the Book Lady's given 10 seconds to get out of the house] 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...
Book Lady: Nine elevenths are ninety-nine, nine twelfths are a hundred and eight, nine thirteens are a hundred and seventeen, nine fourteenths are a hundred and twenty-six.
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Guy Montag: Do you remember what you asked me the other day; if I ever read the books I burn? Remember?
Clarisse: Um hmm.
Guy Montag: Last night I read one.
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Guy Montag: [holding a book in his hand] Behind each of these books, there's a man. That's what interests me.
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Amazon.com essential video
The classic science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury was a curious choice for one of the leading directors of the French New Wave, François Truffaut. But from the opening credits onward (spoken, not written on screen), Truffaut takes Bradbury's fascinating premise and makes it his own. The futuristic society depicted in Fahrenheit 451 is a culture without books. Firemen still race around in red trucks and wear helmets, but their job is to start fires: they ferret out forbidden stashes of books, douse them with gasoline, and make public bonfires. Oskar Werner, the star of Truffaut's Jules and Jim, plays a fireman named Montag, whose exposure to David Copperfield wakens an instinct toward reading and individual thought. (That's why books are banned--they give people too many ideas.) In an intriguing casting flourish, Julie Christie plays two roles: Montag's bored, drugged-up wife and the woman who helps kindle the spark of rebellion. The great Bernard Herrmann wrote the hard-driving music; Nicolas Roeg provided the cinematography. Fahrenheit 451 received a cool critical reception and has never quite been accepted by Truffaut fans or sci-fi buffs. Its deliberately listless manner has always been a problem, although that is part of its point; the lack of reading has made people dry and empty. If the movie is a bit stiff (Truffaut did not speak English well and never tried another project in English), it nevertheless is full of intriguing touches, and the ending is lyrical and haunting. --Robert Horton
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