At least the United States and its allies had laws protecting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is an early view of a horrific future, the type of film that paranoia creates in the mind that there's more going on than meets the eye. Of course there is, and are we better off not knowing about it? That's just one of the questions asked in this first film version of the George Orwell novel, filmed again ironically in 1984 and redone as a Broadway play produced at another stage of fear, paranoia, and the unknown.A nuclear war destroyed democracy as the world knew it, and with part of the world under the thumb of an unseen leader only known as "Big Brother", freedom is believed to be slavery, war means peace, and ignorance of the truth is a must for survival. With the government changing history, forbidding sexual relations and turning the rest of the world into an enemy demanding of hatred, this is a 1984 I'd rather not experience, and for new lovers Edmund O'Brien and Jan Sterling, the beginning of the end. They are surrounded by a strange world of brainwashed individuals who only see big brother as an all knowing God, chances for escape are slim. Neighbors are against neighbors, little girls suspect everything you do of being a threat to big brother, and suspected traitors are not only wiped out, but eliminated from the memory of those who knew them as well. No freedom, no peace, no time to yourself, no allowance of your own thoughts and ideals. It's an ugly view of an unthinkable time, a reminder that freedom is never free, never taken for granted, and an opening to thoughts of what's going on under our noses that need to be dealt with immediately so all we cherish is never eliminated. A brilliant script with somber performances, made to keep the movie theaters it played in as quiet as quiet can be, and a numbing view of one of many forms of world domination that must be prevented. Otherwise, the only peaceful existence in a world so evil is death.

Lacking both the gritty realism and visceral violence of the 1984 version of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, this version is the least interesting of the three that I've seen: the costumes and sets are too neat and clean, and everyone appears well-fed and, for the most part, satisfied; there's none of the EMOTIONAL impact of the 1984 version; in short, a typical '50s television view of Life. Donald Pleasance, who had a bit part as Syme in the BBC version, here plays Parsons- a much meatier part, although so much of it's missing that he doesn't have a whole lot to work with. From the book: Parsons was "one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges upon whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended." "All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism," Orwell wrote. The recent corporate coup by Donald McDonald and the Billionaire Boys Club underscores this. ("It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx.") "It was nicknamed Muck House by the people who worked in it." "... stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumors circulated, photographs faked." Information is trickling out, though. "It was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have been published to the world and its significance made known." "It was important to write something down." ("The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, just to keep the people frightened.") And frightened they are, here in these "united" $tate$, because the Free Poor are puppets of the Fossil Fool Industry. In time, THEY'LL end up immolated in The Memory Hole... "People are being killed all the time..." and "the dangers inherent in the machine are still there." ("This is business.") ("All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.") ("... an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties..." In North Dakota, the Genocide of the Native Peoples continues apace...) "In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it." "The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and all the money." "It is necessary for us to know everything." "... if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance... in practice, the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare." "Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist." "With the development of television... private life came to an end." "There were bribery, favoritism, and racketeering of every kind..." "Power is not a means; it is an end." "We are the priests of power." Sound even vaguely familiar...? ("It was too great a coincidence.") O'Brien is miscast as Smith, but, otherwise it's not a bad adaptation- for what looks like '50s American television, although "it was a peculiarly beautiful book." And, finally: "The book is indestructible."

After wanting to see this movie for about three decades and after teaching the book for almost two, I finally found a copy recently and was surprised by two things: 1) how surprisingly faithful this movie is at times, even more so in certain parts than the definitive 1984 version; and 2) just how painful it is to watch something that bowdlerizes a story you're intimately familiar with.On the one hand, the 1956 version gets the larger picture of Orwell's dystopia completely wrong. Much like the BBC version of two years previously, the movie ignores Orwell's descriptions of Airstrip One as a ruined and war-torn version of London for the most part, and such places as the Ministry of Truth and the canteen look like every other 50s sci-fi movie's version of the 1980s. (They even change Goldstein's name to something futuristic-sounding and unmemorable, though they may have been to avoid any hint of anti-Semitism.) No wonder Orwell's widow hated it so.It's also no surprise that both Julia and O'Brien (oops, sorry, it's O'Connor here, probably because of the lead actor's name being too close to O'Brien) are able to spot Winston as different: Edmund O'Brien plays Winston not as an intellectual stuck in a society antithetical to intellectual thought but as a bit of a gormless idiot, a man who has to be told repeatedly "That photo does not exist. Yes, that one in your hand. Yes, THAT one. It doesn't exist. What, are you deaf?" It's hard to imagine THIS Winston Smith lasting for very long in the actual novel, let alone the 1984 version of the movie. This Winston is also enough of an idiot to believe that the steely, vaudeville villain-eqsue O'Connor could ever be sympathetic - though, to be fair, that's more to do with Michael Redgrave deciding to play the part without an ounce of subtlety, and neither movie does a decent job of explaining why Winston trusts O'Brien in the first place. Of the three actors to play this part, it's definitely Burton first, then André Morell, then Redgrave far in the rear. And don't even get me started about trying to do a movie in the 50s about a society trying to abolish the orgasm...And yet the movie gets some bits absolutely right. Winston's visit to O'Brien's quarters, unlike the similar visit in the later version, includes Julia and includes her objection to O'Connor's suggestion that they may someday have to separate. (All these years, I thought that scene occurred in the later version, too, but rewatching it the other night revealed that it doesn't.) It also gets some of the broader strokes right, too: I hadn't expected the Two Minute Hate to work so well in this futuristic setting, nor to have the torture scenes make any sense. Still, give me the later version anyday over this one. This is definitely your grandfather's 1984, not Orwell's.

In a recent review of Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil,' I confidently referred to the film as a "weird, twisted, fantastical tale of the sheer absurdity of an Orwellian society." In all honesty, at that time, I wasn't even certain of what constituted an "Orwellian" society, since I had never read the novel, and was only repeating fragments which I had extracted from other sources. Not more than three weeks ago, I decided to finally get my hands on George Orwell's famous dystopian story to see what it was all about, and was somewhat surprised to discover that it was one of the most engaging pieces of literature I had ever read. Eager to find out how the film adaptations treated Orwell's themes, I immediately tracked down copies of Michael Radford's timely version (released in 1984), as well as Michael Anderson's harder-to-find '1984,' released in 1956.Michael Anderson's '1984' was not, in fact, the first adaptation of George Orwell's novel, following a 1954 BBC television Sunday Night Theatre broadcast, which I've heard is phenomenal. I had expected that a 1950s adaptation would sugarcoat some of the novel's darker and more pessimistic themes, and yet I was pleasantly surprised to find that screenwriters Ralph Gilbert Bettison and William Templeton have followed Orwell's story quite closely. Edmond O'Brien plays Winston Smith, a lowly member of the Outer Party at the Ministry of Truth, where he works every day at "revising" history to correspond with Big Brother's most recent declarations. Winston secretly harbours a resentment towards Big Brother and his totalitarian government, a crime that is punishable by death should he be observed by the all-powerful Thought Police. However, Winston is not alone, and he soon discovers that the beautiful young Julia (Jan Sterling) also shares his reservations, and the two strike up a romantic relationship, meeting in locations without surveillance and always toying with the risk of capture.Inevitably, both are arrested by the dictatorial government, and Winston falls into the hands of Gen. O'Connor (changed from O'Brien in the novel, possibly to avoid the name clash with the film's main star), played by Michael Redgrave. Slowly but surely, O'Connor sets about destroying Winston's will, persisting with his torturous punishment, not only until Winston obeys Big Brother, but until he loves him. An alternative ending reportedly had Winston and Julia screaming "Down with Big Brother" as they fell before the firing squad, a conclusion that I suspect would have infuriated George Orwell. Fortunately, the version I saw stayed much truer to the spirit of the novel, ending with a "rehabilitated" Winston proclaiming his genuine love for the almighty leader. There is also a brief, ten-second epilogue in which the narrator practically spells out the film's moral – as if it wasn't clear enough already – but this minor slip-up is easily forgiven.The performances in the film are very well done. Edmond O'Brien does not look how I had originally pictured Winston Smith – perhaps a bit plumper than expected – but he did an excellent job, most impressive in the scenes of his torture. There is one brilliant long-take in which we see O'Connor pacing back and forth across the screen, periodically holding up four fingers and trying to convince Winston that there are five. Winston, pictured on a television monitor behind O'Connor, vigilantly maintains that "two and two equals four," before the latter's persistent torture finally breaks him. The acting here from both parties is sublime, and we can really feel the agony that poor Winston is enduring. Also notable is actor Donald Pleasence, who plays R. Parsons, an average workman who is hopelessly devoted to the Party and its leader, even after he is arrested for alleged thought-crimes.Perhaps one of the few complaints that I can make about the film is how Room 101 was dealt with. Though I was most impressed with O'Brien's acting during this sequence, it was all over much too quickly to be effective, and we don't even see a thing, treated only to the frantic squeaks of a mass of hungry rodents. Whilst it is often true that the less the audience sees the better, here didn't seem to be one of those moments, and the whole scene would have worked much better, in my view, had we been subjected to what Winston could see; to be face-to-face with "the worst thing in the world." Other than this, I can certainly recommend '1984' for its fine treatment of a challenging piece of dystopian literature. This one is well worth tracking down.