John Hurt

Richard Burton

Suzanna Hamilton

Cyril Cusack

Gregor Fisher

James Walker

Andrew Wilde

David Cann

Peter Frye

Roger Lloyd Pack

David Trevena

Anthony Benson

Phyllis Logan

Garry Cooper

Rupert Baderman

Corinna Seddon

Martha Parsey

Merelina Kendall

P.J. Nicholas

Lynne Radford

Pip Donaghy

Shirley Stelfox

Janet Key

Hugh Walters

John Hughes

Robert Putt

Christine Hargreaves

Matthew Scurfield

John Golightly

Rolf Saxon

Ole Oldendorp

Eddie Stacey

Norman Bacon

John Foss

Carey Wilson

Mitzi McKenzie

Pam Gems

Joscik Barbarossa

John Boswall

Bob Flag

Keith Gale

Annie Lennox

Lucien Morgan

Michael Munn

Jason Savage

Fred Wood

Michael Radford

Marvin J. Rosenblum

Tom Priestley

George Orwell

Al Clark

Simon Perry

Gina Rosenblum

Dominic Muldowney

Robert Devereux

Roger Deakins

Allan Cameron

Rebecca Howard

Mark Raggett

Amanda Grenville

Martyn Hebert

Eddie Andres

John Allenby

Ene Watts

Grant Hicks

Royce Baxter

Bryan Tilling

John Brady

Stephanie Kaye

Guido Reidy

Dick Pope

Debbie Scragg

Andrew Speller

Sue Sudbury

Philippe Pickford

Derek Holding

Mary Hillman

Ian Scoones

Paula Gillespie

Anna Dryhurst

Polly Moseley

Emma Porteous

John Davis

Sid Sutton

Fraser Taggart

Terry Cade

Bill Weston

Terry Walsh

David Keating

Drama

Science Fiction

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Atlantic Releasing Corporation

Umbrella-Rosenblum Film Production

Virgin Benelux

Virgin Schallplatten

Virgin Films

20th Century Fox

Germany

Netherlands

United Kingdom

English

based on novel or book

dystopia

fascism

totalitarian regime

anarchist

brainwashing

orwellian

totalitarianism

future vision

future noir

authoritarian

callous

gloomy

impartial

matter of fact

mean spirited

george orwell

Based on George Orwell's  dystopian novel from the 1940s, the movie was produced in the very year that Orwell had set it, 1984.

Horrified by the recent atrocities by the Germans and Russians, and fearing that England and America might take a similar turn, Orwell had painted a frightening portrait of the ultimate dictatorship, and the movie faithfully followed him.  Some of the details were:

(1) Continual surveillance, in this case carried out by cameras hidden inside television sets.

(2) Decaying infrastructure and shoddy merchandise produced by the Party's monopoly of the economy.

(3) A political language, NewSpeak, full of euphemisms and code words for the government's activities.

(4) A brutal law-enforcement system in which being suspected even of disloyal THOUGHTS can bring barbaric punishment.

The movie stars John Hurt as the beaten rebel, Susanna Hamilton as his mistress, and Richard Burton as the government official on whom they pin their hopes  (like Orwell himself,  Burton was fatally ill during the production and died before the movie's release)

Peter McGinn

Do not watch this movie if you are feeling pessimistic or depressed, because the kind of catharsis won’t help you. Nineteen-eighty-four is a bleak movie based on a dark novel that paints a totalitarian world that really sucks. Although they don’t merely tell lies over and over until devotees believe them - instead they actually rewrite historical details in newspapers — still it bears a striking and chilling parallel to the current moment.

The acting is excellent and the sparing use of color is very effective, but I felt there were holes here and there details perhaps explained more fully in the novel. I want to read the book now for comparison, though I gather the film hovers close to its plot. It would be fascinating to know what the other societies were like, especially the ones they are alternately supposed to be at war with or allied to, but I imagine even the novel only deals with this thought-crime ridden hellhole.

It is worth watching for sure, but not at 2 a.m. after your partner has broken up with you and you have lost your job.

CinemaSerf

This adaptation is a fairly faithful, if a little too abridged, version of the Orwellian story of absolute power, sedition and oppression but it's really John Hurt who makes this version stand out. His performance as the weedy "Winston" - a low level bureaucrat in the Ministry of Truth, is visceral as he depicts a character who has found his own way to rebel against the not so benevolent rule of "Big Brother". Everything they do, say - even think, is being monitored and so his life is conceivably now in considerable danger. That is only likely to increase after he encounters the like-minded "Julia" (Suzanna Hamilton) and together they begin to think the unthinkable! Richard Burton starts to make his presence felt around half way though with his perfectly pitched vocal tones and even more measured delivery creating a sense of torturous menace that you could cut with a knife, and though he features quite sparingly his contributions when the two are together put an whole new meaning on cat and mouse. It's a brutal watch, both physically and psychologically and the use of militaristic archive and the simplicity of it's own production help give this an edge that's gritty and philosophically quite savage as we head even deeper into a society controlled by machines, tyrants and indifference almost eighty years after it was written. It's bleak!

1984 ≣ 1984 ≣ Trailer #1

1984 (1984) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p]

Nineteen Eighty-Four( 1984)

George Orwell's terrifying vision comes to the screen.

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A review by CharlesTheBold

Written by CharlesTheBold on Wed Feb 22 2017

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