Video Find the Perfect Gift    Send a Gift Certificate
Search 
Home › Classic Films › Actresses › Christie, Julie
Pages: 1 2
Review MGM Entertainment / Dr Zhivago [VHS] [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • David Lean|Omar Sharif|Julie Christie|Geraldine Chaplin
Release date: 1993-02-22
Run time: 213 min.
Creator: David Lean|Omar Sharif|Julie Christie|Geraldine Chaplin
RRP: £12.99
Price: £9.00

Review Dr Zhivago [VHS] [1965] / MGM Entertainment:

David Lean's wintry adaptation of Boris Pasternak's melodramatic Russian Revolution romance, Doctor Zhivago, is a masterpiece of epic filmmaking, but one that risks leaving the viewer cold. Though none of the film was shot in the then USSR, Lean's assured technique nevertheless illuminates the breathtaking backgrounds magnificently: from the snowy wastes of the Urals to the strife-torn streets of Moscow, Lean stages a series of wonderful set-pieces showing war, revolution and its terrible aftermath. The problem lies in the foreground. Omar Sharif's entirely passive Zhivago is, we are told, a romantic poet of great sensitivity who internalises all his emotions and expresses them in verse. The trouble is the audience never gets to see a line of his poems, not even the centrally important "Lara" cycle. Thus Zhivago at the end of the picture is as much an emotional blank to us as he was at the beginning. His affair with the idealised beauty that is Julie Christie's Lara is also taken for granted by the filmmakers rather than set up in any convincing way, their mutual attraction remaining a mystery that creates a vacuum at the core of the picture. Given that none of the central characters with the exception of Rod Steiger's fire-breathing lecher Komarovsky ever give way to strong emotions, the romantic heart of the film remains oddly frigid. Matters are not helped by composer Maurice Jarre's incessant "Lara's Theme", which many will find teeth-grindingly irritating. Still, any David Lean epic, even a flawed one, is always going to be a first-class cinematic experience, and Zhivago is assuredly that. [+]
On the DVD: A stunning anamorphic widescreen print is the ideal way to appreciate David Lean's craftsmanship and this movie's glorious, wintry cinematography. Maurice Jarre's "Lara's Theme" and the rest of his patchwork score can be heard in a music-only track, while Omar Sharif is joined by Lean's widow Sandra and Rod Steiger for an intermittent commentary. The second bonus disc contains a good hour-long making-of documentary plus 10 shorter contemporary documentaries giving various insights into the location shooting and the cast and crew. But it's the sheer beauty of the picture that will astonish and make this disc forever treasurable. -Mark Walker.

Review Warner Home Video / Hamlet [VHS] [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Kate Winslet
  • Kenneth Branagh
  • Julie Christie
  • Riz Abbasi
  • Derek Jacobi
  • Kenneth Branagh
Release date: 2001-08-06
Run time: 121 min.
Creator: William Shakespeare
RRP: £6.99
Price: £10.00

Review Hamlet [VHS] [1997] / Warner Home Video:

Kenneth Branagh's four-hour production of Shakespeare's full text for Hamlet is visually lush (shot in 70mm, which is rarely done) and full of fascinating story moments that normally get cut from shorter stage versions. (Your idea of what kind of fellow Polonius is may change quite a bit. ) The unexpurgated approach is truly enlightening, and Branagh intermittently succeeds at giving familiar moments in the drama an original cinematic spin, including Hamlet's spooky confrontation with his father's ghost (Brian Blessed). (Branagh also imposes some Hollywood glitter on the proceedings by casting the likes of Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Charlton Heston and Jack Lemmon in the smaller parts. ) The pre-Titanic Kate Winslet is very good as the doomed Ophelia, and Derek Jacobi delivers a wonderfully nuanced performance as Claudius, whose character is definitely filled out by the restored material. Branagh's own performance is a little revisionist-some viewers have quibbled with it while others seem fine. -Tom Keogh.

Review Warner Home Video / Far From The Madding Crowd [VHS] [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Peter Finch
  • Terence Stamp
  • Fiona Walker
  • Julie Christie
  • Alan Bates
  • John Schlesinger
Release date: 2000-07-10
Run time: 155 min.
Creator: Thomas Hardy
RRP: £9.99
Price: £11.99

Review Far From The Madding Crowd [VHS] [1967] / Warner Home Video:

John Schlesinger's solid adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel sees three rival suitors vying for the affections of the beautiful Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie decked out in a variety of bonnets and frilly dresses), who has just inherited a farm. The men in her life are stout, whiskered yeoman Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), an impoverished local farmer; neurotic, repressed squire William Boldwood (Peter Finch); and handsome rascal Sgt Troy (Terrence Stamp), who dresses as if he's Flashman and breaks women's hearts for a hobby. Thanks to cameraman Nic Roeg and production designer Richard MacDonald (who also worked for Joseph Losey), 19th-century Dorset looks as pretty and as picturesque as a John Constable reproduction on top of a biscuit tin. Not that Schlesinger or screenwriter Frederic Raphael underplay the duress of rural life. We see the hardship of the farm workers' lives as the seasons turn. The film opens with a spectacular sequence in which Gabriel Oak's dog drives his flock of sheep over a cliff, thereby forcing him into penury. Whether hunger or heartbreak, every character here suffers. Bathsheba (like the model Christie plays in Darling) is a free-spirit in a society in which women's rights are severely restricted. -Geoffrey Macnab.

Review 4 Front Video / Afterglow [VHS] [1998]
Actors & Directors
  • Nick Nolte
  • Julie Christie
  • Alan Rudolph
  • Lara Flynn Boyle
  • Jonny Lee Miller
  • Jay Underwood
Release date: 2002-07-01
Run time: 109 min.
Creator: Willi Bär
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.70

Review Afterglow [VHS] [1998] / 4 Front Video:

Alan Rudolph's dry comedy of sad characters, Afterglow, touted for its Oscar-nominated performance by Julie Christie, is a solid entry for fans of Rudolph's Choose Me and Love at Large. First we meet the amorous Mr Fix-it, aptly named Lucky Mann (Nick Nolte). Lucky is a big teddy bear who finds joy in construction and womanising. This arrangement seems to be fine with his longtime wife Phyllis (Christie), an ex-B-movie actress who acts as if much of her life is still a bad movie. Lucky's latest client is a young housewife (Lara Flynn Boyle) who also has a muddle of a marriage: Marianne swoons for Lucky's attention, because her husband, Jeffrey (Jonny Lee Miller), has energy for his high-rise business career but little else. Soon Jeffrey espies sad and stunning Phyllis and is on the prowl, unaware that she is Lucky's wife. Many filmmakers have made statements about the rarity of monogamy but Rudolph is one of the few who finds so much strength in fooling around. He has deep, long answers to why his characters are the way there are, and this leads to scenes that actors relish, even if they don't ring true. Certainly Christie has not had a part this juicy in years, and Nolte, warm and energetic, simply shines. Miller, usually the young ruffian in films such as Trainspotting, gives an intriguing slant to a stuffed shirt. [+]
Rudolph has never reached the complexity or the mastery of his mentor Robert Altman, but he has created his own niche: the comedy of characters usually found in urban dramas. There are laughs in this movie that you simply won't find in the typical Hollywood comedy. Like Altman, he proves that being an independent voice is not about the methods of filmmaking, it's about talent. -Doug Thomas, Amazon. com.

Review Columbia Tri-Star Home Video / Hamlet [VHS] [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Julie Christie
  • Riz Abbasi
  • Derek Jacobi
  • Kenneth Branagh
  • Kenneth Branagh
  • Kate Winslet
Release date: 1997-10-20
Run time: 232 min.
Creator: William Shakespeare
RRP: £14.99
Price: £4.99

Review Hamlet [VHS] [1997] / Columbia Tri-Star Home Video:

Kenneth Branagh's four-hour production of Shakespeare's full text for Hamlet is visually lush (shot in 70mm, which is rarely done) and full of fascinating story moments that normally get cut from shorter stage versions. (Your idea of what kind of fellow Polonius is may change quite a bit. ) The unexpurgated approach is truly enlightening, and Branagh intermittently succeeds at giving familiar moments in the drama an original cinematic spin, including Hamlet's spooky confrontation with his father's ghost (Brian Blessed). (Branagh also imposes some Hollywood glitter on the proceedings by casting the likes of Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Charlton Heston and Jack Lemmon in the smaller parts. ) The pre-Titanic Kate Winslet is very good as the doomed Ophelia, and Derek Jacobi delivers a wonderfully nuanced performance as Claudius, whose character is definitely filled out by the restored material. Branagh's own performance is a little revisionist-some viewers have quibbled with it while others seem fine. -Tom Keogh.

Review Warner Home Video / Darling [VHS] [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Julie Christie
  • Roland Curram
  • José Luis de Villalonga
  • Dirk Bogarde
  • John Schlesinger
  • Laurence Harvey
Release date: 2000-07-10
Run time: 122 min.
Creator: Frederic Raphael
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.70

Review Darling [VHS] [1965] / Warner Home Video:

"It's far too pleased with itself. I wince when I see it now", director John Schlesinger observes of his 1965 film, Darling. You can tell why he's embarrassed. Looking back, his swinging 60s' satire about a model (Julie Christie) so keen to get ahead that she ditches her husband and betrays a succession of boyfriends looks hideously dated. With its self-consciously hip dialogue and unnecessary voice-over, the screenplay by Frederic Raphael (who also wrote Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut) doesn't help. Most of the men Christie encounters, whether Laurence Harvey's slick businessman (who can't pass a mirror without preening himself in it) or Dirk Bogarde's neurotic TV pundit (who has delusions of literary grandeur), are as narcissistic as she is. Although this seems to be a cautionary tale about slick, superficial London media and fashion folk, it's obvious that the filmmakers are half in love with the world they're pretending to lampoon. The visual gags-rich, society matrons at a charity event gorging themselves on food or Christie's poster being plastered over an image of a starving child-are heavy-handed in the extreme. Still, Christie is tremendous in the role which established her as an international star (she won an Oscar). However shallow and selfish her character seems, we can't help but warm to her. [+]
-Geoffrey Macnab.

Actors & Directors
  • Julie Christie
  • Jerry London
Run time: 180 min.
Price: £10.99

Review Long Way from Home-Dadah Is. [VHS] / BRVV 80070:

The harrowing true story of a mother's fight for her son's life.

Review / Doctor Zhivago [VHS]
Actors & Directors
  • David Lean
  • Julie Christie
  • Alec Guinness
  • Rod Steiger
  • Geraldine Chaplin
  • Omar Sharif
Creator: Julie Christie
Price: £10.99

Review Doctor Zhivago [VHS]:

David Lean's wintry adaptation of Boris Pasternak's melodramatic Russian Revolution romance, Doctor Zhivago, is a masterpiece of epic filmmaking, but one that risks leaving the viewer cold. Though none of the film was shot in the then USSR, Lean's assured technique nevertheless illuminates the breathtaking backgrounds magnificently: from the snowy wastes of the Urals to the strife-torn streets of Moscow, Lean stages a series of wonderful set-pieces showing war, revolution and its terrible aftermath. The problem lies in the foreground. Omar Sharif's entirely passive Zhivago is, we are told, a romantic poet of great sensitivity who internalises all his emotions and expresses them in verse. The trouble is the audience never gets to see a line of his poems, not even the centrally important "Lara" cycle. Thus Zhivago at the end of the picture is as much an emotional blank to us as he was at the beginning. His affair with the idealised beauty that is Julie Christie's Lara is also taken for granted by the filmmakers rather than set up in any convincing way, their mutual attraction remaining a mystery that creates a vacuum at the core of the picture. Given that none of the central characters with the exception of Rod Steiger's fire-breathing lecher Komarovsky ever give way to strong emotions, the romantic heart of the film remains oddly frigid. Matters are not helped by composer Maurice Jarre's incessant "Lara's Theme", which many will find teeth-grindingly irritating. Still, any David Lean epic, even a flawed one, is always going to be a first-class cinematic experience, and Zhivago is assuredly that. [+]
On the DVD: A stunning anamorphic widescreen print is the ideal way to appreciate David Lean's craftsmanship and this movie's glorious, wintry cinematography. Maurice Jarre's "Lara's Theme" and the rest of his patchwork score can be heard in a music-only track, while Omar Sharif is joined by Lean's widow Sandra and Rod Steiger for an intermittent commentary. The second bonus disc contains a good hour-long making-of documentary plus 10 shorter contemporary documentaries giving various insights into the location shooting and the cast and crew. But it's the sheer beauty of the picture that will astonish and make this disc forever treasurable. -Mark Walker.

Review Warner Home Video / Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [VHS] [2004]
Actors & Directors
  • Daniel Radcliffe
  • Alfonso Cuaron
  • Warwick Davis
  • Tom Felton
  • David Bradley
  • Julie Christie
Release date: 2004-11-19
Run time: 136 min.
Creator: Julie Christie
RRP: £15.99
Price: £7.99

Review Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [VHS] [2004] / Warner Home Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Billy Crystal
  • Gerard Depardieu
  • Kenneth Branagh
  • Charlton Heston
  • Kenneth Branagh
  • Julie Christie
Run time: 256 min.
Price: £20.00

Review Hamlet & To Be On Camera [VHS PAL Video] / CVR 86033V:

At least the 22nd time William Shakespeare's most famous tragedy has been brought to the screen, Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of Hamlet was the first to preserve Shakespeare's entire text, uncut and unabridged. Moving the action into the 19th century, Branagh cast himself in the title role and, as in his adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, assembled an eclectic group of actors that mixed veteran Shakespearean performers (including John Mills, Judi Dench, John Gielgud, and Derek Jacobi) with Hollywood stars not known for interpreting the Bard's work (among them Robin Williams, Charlton Heston, Billy Crystal, and Jack Lemmon). Also includes 'To Be On Camera' - The documentary on the making of Hamlet.

Review Icon Home Entertainment / Miracle Maker [VHS] [2000]
Actors & Directors
  • Rebecca Callard
  • Stanislav Sokolov
  • James Frain
  • Julie Christie
  • Derek W. Hayes
  • Ralph Fiennes
  • Michael Bryant
Release date: 2000-10-30
Run time: 90 min.
Creator: Murray Watts
RRP: £10.99
Price: £1.79

Review Miracle Maker [VHS] [2000] / Icon Home Entertainment:

This animated feature-length life of Jesus boasts a stellar pedigree. Originally a BBC Wales production, it showcases the voices of some of Britain's finest actors in any medium: Ralph Fiennes as a brooding and humble Jesus, Miranda Richardson as Mary Magdalene, Richard E. Grant as John the Baptist and David Thewlis as Judas. The lovely, flute-heavy score is by Oscar-winner Anne Dudley (The Full Monty). And clearly a lot of expense has gone into the Claymation-like animation. But while it's hard to find fault with the rendering of this familiar story-it is respectful and definitely done, you might say, by the Book-it would have been nice if there had been a tad more joy, if it walked a bit lighter in its sandals. As it is, all the characters seem consistently subdued, whether they are expressing angst, rage, terror or bliss-none of which is helped by the figures' blank-eyed stares (if animators are becoming ever more sophisticated, why can't they get rid of those creepy blank gazes once and for all?). Still, the weight of having such formidable actors play these familiar roles lends the production a certain credibility, and parents looking for good religious videos that won't insult their kids' intelligence will be thrilled. -Anne Hurley.

Review Warner Home Video / The Go-Between [VHS] [1970]
Actors & Directors
  • Alan Bates
  • Michael Redgrave
  • Margaret Leighton
  • Dominic Guard
  • Joseph Losey
  • Julie Christie
Release date: 2000-07-10
Run time: 111 min.
Creator: L.P. Hartley
RRP: £9.99
Price: £7.99

Review The Go-Between [VHS] [1970] / Warner Home Video:

Writer Harold Pinter and director Joseph Losey always hoped to make an adaptation of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Their version of L. P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between offers tantalising hints as to how the Proust film might have turned out. An old man (Michael Redgrave) thinks back to a summer many years before when, as a young boy, he stayed with the aristocratic Maudsley family in their beautiful house in the Norfolk countryside. On the threshold of adolescence, intensely curious about sex, he became the go-between for Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie) and local farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates) as they conducted an affair behind the backs of the Maudsley family. This is a slow-moving but beguiling story of lost innocence. There's a subtlety and intelligence here rarely found in British costume dramas. The filmmakers go to enormous lengths to recreate Edwardian England, but never allow the period detail to stifle the storytelling. Although life with the Maudsleys seems idyllic-an endless round of picnics, cricket matches and parties-there is always an undercurrent of violence. [+]
The Maudsleys are inveterate snobs. The terrifying Mrs Maudsley (played by Margaret Leighton) simply can't countenance the idea that her daughter would have an affair with a man so far beneath her on the social scale as Burgess. The little boy carries the messages between the lovers without ever quite understanding how explosive their contents are. -Geoffrey Macnab.

Review New World Video / Miss Mary (1986)
Actors & Directors
  • Nacha Guevara
  • Julie Christie
  • María Luisa Bemberg
  • Eduardo Pavlovsky
Run time: 95 min.

Review Miss Mary (1986) / New World Video:

A young British woman is hired as a governess by a wealthy Argentine family. Through her position, she slowly sees how the upper class of society is slowly crumbling, and how a fascist movement is preparing to install itself in power.

Review Warner Home Video / Doctor Zhivago [VHS] [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Julie Christie
  • David Lean
  • Geraldine Chaplin
  • Omar Sharif
  • Alec Guinness
  • Rod Steiger
Release date: 2000-02-14
Run time: 200 min.
Creator: Robert Bolt
RRP: £10.99
Price: £1.22

Review Doctor Zhivago [VHS] [1965] / Warner Home Video:

David Lean's wintry adaptation of Boris Pasternak's melodramatic Russian Revolution romance, Doctor Zhivago, is a masterpiece of epic filmmaking, but one that risks leaving the viewer cold. Though none of the film was shot in the then USSR, Lean's assured technique nevertheless illuminates the breathtaking backgrounds magnificently: from the snowy wastes of the Urals to the strife-torn streets of Moscow, Lean stages a series of wonderful set-pieces showing war, revolution and its terrible aftermath. The problem lies in the foreground. Omar Sharif's entirely passive Zhivago is, we are told, a romantic poet of great sensitivity who internalises all his emotions and expresses them in verse. The trouble is the audience never gets to see a line of his poems, not even the centrally important "Lara" cycle. Thus Zhivago at the end of the picture is as much an emotional blank to us as he was at the beginning. His affair with the idealised beauty that is Julie Christie's Lara is also taken for granted by the filmmakers rather than set up in any convincing way, their mutual attraction remaining a mystery that creates a vacuum at the core of the picture. Given that none of the central characters with the exception of Rod Steiger's fire-breathing lecher Komarovsky ever give way to strong emotions, the romantic heart of the film remains oddly frigid. Matters are not helped by composer Maurice Jarre's incessant "Lara's Theme", which many will find teeth-grindingly irritating. Still, any David Lean epic, even a flawed one, is always going to be a first-class cinematic experience, and Zhivago is assuredly that. [+]
On the DVD: A stunning anamorphic widescreen print is the ideal way to appreciate David Lean's craftsmanship and this movie's glorious, wintry cinematography. Maurice Jarre's "Lara's Theme" and the rest of his patchwork score can be heard in a music-only track, while Omar Sharif is joined by Lean's widow Sandra and Rod Steiger for an intermittent commentary. The second bonus disc contains a good hour-long making-of documentary plus 10 shorter contemporary documentaries giving various insights into the location shooting and the cast and crew. But it's the sheer beauty of the picture that will astonish and make this disc forever treasurable. -Mark Walker.

Review Warner Home Video / Don't Look Now [VHS] [1973]
Actors & Directors
  • Julie Christie
  • Massimo Serato
  • Nicolas Roeg
  • Donald Sutherland
  • Hilary Mason
  • Clelia Matania
Release date: 1999-07-05
Run time: 105 min.
Creator: Daphne Du Maurier
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.58

Review Don't Look Now [VHS] [1973] / Warner Home Video:

Don't Look Now was filmed in 1973 and based around a Daphne Du Maurier novel. Directed by Nicolas Roeg, it has lost none of its chill: like Kubrick's The Shining, its dazzling use of juxtaposition, colour, sound and editing make it a seductive experience in cinematic terror, whose aftershock lingers in daydreams and nightmares, filling you with uncertainty and dread even after its horrific climax. Donald Sutherland plays John Baxter, an architect, Julie Christie his wife: a well-to-do couple whose young daughter drowns while out playing. Cut to Venice, out of season, where the couple encounter a pair of sisters, one of whom claims psychic powers and to have communicated with their dead daughter. The subsequent plot is as labyrinthine as the back streets of the city itself, down which Baxter spots a diminutive and elusive red-coated figure akin to his daughter, before being drawn into an almost unbearable finale. Don't Look Now is a Gothic masterpiece, with its melange of gore, mystery, ecstasy, the supernatural and above all grief, while the city of Venice itself-which thanks to Roeg and his team seems to breathe like a dark, sinister living organism throughout the movie-deserves a credit in its own right. Not just a magnificent drama but an advanced feat of cinema. -David Stubbs.

Review warner / Memoirs of a Survivor (1981)
Actors & Directors
  • David Gladwell
  • Nigel Hawthorne
  • Leonie Mellinger
  • Julie Christie
  • Christopher Guard
Run time: 111 min.

Review Memoirs of a Survivor (1981) / warner:

Julie Christie plays 'D', chronicler of a society in chaos, who looks down on the marauding gangs, and rubbish-strewn streets from the fortress prison of her flat. Buffeted by inner dreams and longings, D finds an alternative world by stepping through the wall of her flat, like Alice through the Looking Glass. Here it is Victorian England, the bosom of an unsettled family, harbingers, perhaps, of the decay to come. She flits between the two sides of her double life, always observing, never participating, and watches as her protégé, Emily (Leonie Mellinger), becomes involved with vagrants' leader Gerald (Christopher Guard) and their efforts to control the violent scavengers fail.

Review First Independent Video / Heat And Dust / Shakespeare Wallah / Autobiography Of A Princess [VHS] (1983/1965/1975)
Actors & Directors
  • Shashi Kapoor
  • Felicity Kendal
  • James Ivory
  • Julie Christie
Release date: 1997-10-13
Run time: 298 min.
Creator: Madhur Jaffrey
Price: £12.99

Review Heat And Dust / Shakespeare Wallah / Autobiography Of A Princess [VHS] (1983/1965/1975) / First Independent Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Billy Liar [VHS] [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Ethel Griffies
  • Julie Christie
  • John Schlesinger
  • Mona Washbourne
  • Wilfred Pickles
  • Tom Courtenay
Release date: 1994-08-01
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: Willis Hall
RRP: £5.99
Price: £4.49

Review Billy Liar [VHS] [1963] / Warner Home Video:

Billy Liar was the multimedia phenomenon of its era. Starting out as a novel by Yorkshire writer Keith Waterhouse, it rapidly became a long-running stage play, adapted by Waterhouse with playwright Willis Hall, which lead to the movie, scripted by Waterhouse and Hall for John Schlesinger to direct, then a stage musical and finally a spin-off TV series. Do you get the feeling it caught the mood of the times? The basic set-up owes a lot to James Thurber's classic short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Our hero, Billy Fisher, lives at home in a Bradford semi with his nagging parents and works as a lowly clerk in an undertaker's parlour. But, in his imagination he lives a rich and varied fantasy life as gallant military leader, suave socialite, best-selling novelist and so forth. Trouble is, he can't always keep fantasy and reality apart, any more than he can the keep two girls he's engaged to separate. Not to mention his other problems…. Schlesinger's direction brings out the desperation behind the comedy, and Tom Courtenay, at once defiant and hangdog, slips perfectly into the role created on stage by Albert Finney. But the whole cast's a joy, not least the great Leonard Rossiter as undertaker Mr Shadrach, Billy's saturnine boss. And then there's Julie Christie-the luminous spirit of the Swinging 60s-in her first starring role as the girl who offers Billy a chance of real escape. [+]
At the end, when she takes the train to London, away from the smoke and the grimness "oop" north, the whole British New Wave went with her. On the DVD: just the theatrical trailer which is a fairly crass affair. There's been no remastering, it seems, but both sound and vision are clean enough and the print preserves the original's full 2. 35:1 widescreen ratio. -Philip Kemp.

Review 4 Front Video / Fahrenheit 451 [VHS] [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • François Truffaut
  • Jeremy Spenser
  • Oskar Werner
  • Cyril Cusack
  • Anton Diffring
  • Julie Christie
Release date: 2000-03-06
Run time: 109 min.
Creator: Ray Bradbury
Price: £5.99

Review Fahrenheit 451 [VHS] [1966] / 4 Front 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 petrol 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 towards 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, Amazon. com.

Actors & Directors
  • Pat O'Connor
  • Iain Glen
  • Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
  • Michael Kitchen
  • Julie Christie
Release date: 1991-09-16
Run time: 105 min.
Creator: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
Price: £10.99

Review Fools Of Fortune [VHS] / Palace Video (Defunct):


Models & Brands:
Dr Zhivago [VHS] [1965], Hamlet [VHS] [1997], Far From The Madding Crowd [VHS] [1967], Afterglow [VHS] [1998], Hamlet [VHS] [1997], Darling [VHS] [1965], Long Way from Home-Dadah Is. [VHS], Doctor Zhivago [VHS], Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [VHS] [2004], Hamlet & To Be On Camera [VHS PAL Video], Miracle Maker [VHS] [2000], The Go-Between [VHS] [1970], Miss Mary (1986), Doctor Zhivago [VHS] [1965], Don't Look Now [VHS] [1973], Memoirs of a Survivor (1981), Heat And Dust / Shakespeare Wallah / Autobiography Of A Princess [VHS] (1983/1965/1975), Billy Liar [VHS] [1963], Fahrenheit 451 [VHS] [1966], Fools Of Fortune [VHS]

Top headlines:
Pages: 1 2
Search 
DVD Rental: try it for free