1984 john hurt movie
All three films are of strong interest to libertarians for their enduring anti-totalitarian message. The now-classic John Hurt film version of George Orwell’s 1984 is probably the definitive cinematic interpretation, but the 19 tellings continue to attract fans.
1984 JOHN HURT MOVIE MOVIE
He does a lot of sitting though, as the film is set in a prison! Orwell’s 1984 in Three Films (1954, 1956 & 1984) Movie Review.
When I saw it recently, I thought John looked at the very most 5ft9. I believe the film was from '78 I'll get back if I find out that I'm wrong! John was still young in that film, and that is why I am citing it as a prime example of a film which shows him at his optimum height.
Twice running, I have ended up watching it when I hadn't planned to! I love the music, the plot's based on fact and the outcome's positive, but I don't like the hanging of John Hurt's pet cat! He's made films which leave a lasting impression - like 'The Elephant Man', and who can forget his part in 'Alien'? Not me, that's for sure!Įvery so often on TV, 'Midnight Express' gets shown on what is now called the 'Sony Movie Channel', whereas it used to be 'Movie Mix'. John's one of our finest actors of all time. Please can you add 'Midnight Express', Rob? This is also true of Julia, his lover, a lively, resourceful character who here. The same year, he married American production assistant Joan Dalton. The couple moved to Kenya but divorced six years later in 1990. Too many of his hates, fears, and struggles remain hidden. In 1984, Hurt married his old friend and American actress, Donna Peacock. Though exposition is provided by a voice-over of Winston Smith’s inner monologue, not nearly enough of this emerges. George Orwells novel of a totalitarian future society in which a man whose daily work is rewriting history tries to rebel by falling in love. Lovers of Orwell’s novel will be disappointed those who have never read it will be utterly confused. 1984 is too vast, too diverse, too verbal to be spread thin onto celluloid. And like totalitarianism, film tends to destroy, or at least maim, everything it touches. The trouble is, film itself has a totalitarian dimension unlike a novel, it takes away our ability to imagine for ourselves. Like Orwell, their vision is not technological but moral. To their great credit, the filmmakers avoided this sort of thing. It arrives on the heels of two years of Orwelliana in the media, much of it futuristic nonsense trivializing Orwell as a novelistic Alvin Toffler predicting which gismos we would be using by now. The film 1984, unfortunately, is poorly timed.
The tortured hero, Winston Smith, shows that he understands the situation by scrawling GOD IS POWER while being cured of “thought crime.” “If you want a vision of the future,” says O’Brien, kind of a Grand Inquisitor character, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.” This is the vision of 1984, a godless world of fear and loathing, of chronic war and shortages, of the Lie and Doublethink, of a materialist puritanism. George Orwell claimed in his latter years that every line he wrote was “against totalitarianism.” Should this system triumph, he believed, all human values would perish. Virgin Films, written and directed by Michael Radford no rating.