The Criterion Collection

1984

Edition no. 984

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Release Date: Tuesday, 23 July 2019
Country of Release: USA
MSRP: $29.95

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Licensor Information

MGM Home Entertainment

Directed by: Michael Radford

Featuring: John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, Cyril Cusack, Gregor Fisher

This masterly adaptation of George Orwell’s chilling parable about totalitarian oppression gives harrowing cinematic expression to the book’s bleak prophetic vision. In a rubble-strewn surveillance state where an endless overseas war props up the repressive regime of the all-seeing Big Brother, and all dissent is promptly squashed, a profoundly alienated citizen, Winston Smith (thrillingly played by John Hurt), risks everything for an illicit affair with the rebellious Julia (Suzanna Hamilton) in a defiant assertion of humanity in the face of soul-crushing conformity. Through vividly grim production design and expressionistically desaturated cinematography by Roger Deakins, Michael Radford’s 1984 conjures a dystopian vision of postwar Britain as fascistic nightmare—a world all too recognizable as our own.

Year: 1984
Time: 110 min.