Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Directed – Rudolph Carier

Adaptation – Nigel Kneale

1957, GB (b/w live TV broadcast)

Starring – Peter Cushing, Yvonne Mitchell, Donald Pleasance, André Morell

 

A fairly definitive adaptation: a BBC play filmed live seems correct for George Orwell's timeless warning about state control and dehumanisation, of fake truth and up-is-down cruelty crushing citizens, exercising power for its own sake. The message hasn’t dated so much. Certainly it was enough to cause controversy at the time, with its post-war grimness and doom-mongering.

 

Cushing is of course great, Donald Pleasance of course show-steals, and André Morell makes for a formidable O'Brien, just as scary in his slickness as Richard Burton was in his drollness in the 1984 adaptation. If some of the acting is a little on the ripe side, the minimalist sets with the inserted filmed sequences of genuine post-war bomb-sites make for an aptly barren backdrop. It's a tale that has lost none of its power. Or maybe its pertinence and poignancy comes around in historical cycles.

 

One of the greats, and this is an admirable adaptation.