"BBC Sunday-Night Theatre" 1984 (1954)

User Rating:

8.1/10   

Director:

Rudolph Cartier

Writers:

George Orwell (novel)
Nigel Kneale (adapted as a television play by)

TV Series:

"BBC Sunday-Night Theatre" (1950)

Original Air Date:

12 December 1954 (Season 5, Episode 50)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

1980s | 1984 | Year In Title | Snow Globe | Totalitarianism

Cast

Peter Cushing	...	Winston Smith
André Morell	...	O'Brien (as Andre Morell)
Yvonne Mitchell	...	Julia
Donald Pleasence	...	Syme
Arnold Diamond	...	Emmanuel Goldstein
Campbell Gray	...	Parsons
Hilda Fenemore	...	Mrs. Parsons
Pamela Grant	...	Parsons Girl
Keith Davis	...	Parsons Boy
Janet Barrow	...	Woman Supervisor
Norman Osborne	...	First Youth
Tony Lyons	...	Second Youth
Malcolm Knight	...	Third Youth
John Baker	...	First Man
Victor Platt	...	Second Man

Also Known As:

"BBC Sunday Night Theatre": Nineteen Eighty-Four (#5.50) (UK) (alternative spelling)

Runtime:

120 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Company:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Trivia:

Following remarks by the Duke of Edinburgh that he and the Queen had "thoroughly enjoyed" the broadcast, the live repeat, four days later, attracted the largest television audience since the Coronation.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: In the canteen, after Winston has said goodbye to Syme, the camera settles back on him and moves forward, bumping into the dining table in the process.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The 100 Greatest Scary Moments (2003) (TV)

The best 1984 by far

This production is breathtaking. The BBC did an amazing job of translating Orwell's bleak book onto the screen. It is very dark and the treatment of Smith at the end of the film is not glossed over, this is really daring given the time it was made.

This is a TV movie, the first film based on the novel, 2 years later a US movie version was made which also starred Donald Pleasance but the two films couldn't be more different. Pleasance plays Syme in this one, and does a great job - most memorably describing how beautiful destroying words is. In the 1956 movie he plays Parsons and is less suited to that role, the actor who plays Parsons in this film is Campbell Gray who i know nothing about but he does a fine job playing the role later played by Gregor Fisher of Rab C Nesbitt fame in the 80s version. Cushing plays Winston Smith and gives a typically great performance, physically he is ideal to play Smith and of course he was a fine actor.

This version stays truest to the novel and is actually better than the John Hurt/Richard Burton version from the eighties.

I can't think of one bad thing about this film, apart from the fact you can't buy it anywhere.