Film (1984). Umbrella-Rosenblum/Virgin Cinema Films. Directed by Michael Radford, starring John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, Cyril Cusack. Screenplay Radford, Jonathan Gems, based on Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell. 110 minutes. Colour.
This second film version (> 1984 for the first) is better acted and more intelligent than its predecessor, but still stresses the romantic interest, substituting an orthodoxly liberal lovers-against-the-system sadness for Orwell's sheer savagery and irony. It was eight weeks into shooting before Burton was cast as the treacherous O'Brien, Smith's Torturer, and he seems a little cut off from the rest of the film. [PN]
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