When books areoutlawed, only outlaws will have books; some of them will have theaudacity to hide them in the hull of a hollowed-out television set.Fahrenheit 451 depicts a society devoted to the expulsion of thought,where television reigns supreme, making the mind a magnet for its ownbanality. "Books make people unhappy, uneasy," says the firestarterMontag (Oskar Werner), whose Sentimental Education this is. JulieChristie plays Linda, his wife, a woman of astounding stupiditymaintained by drugs and interactive television shows, but Christie isalso the outlaw Clarisse, who reads and feels and whose house issuspiciously without a television aerial; there is hope for anyone. Whydid Fran?ois Truffaut choose to film Ray Bradbury's futuristicnightmare? "In our own society," the director said in an interview,"books are not burned...they are rendered useless, drowned in a flood ofimages, sounds, objects." The result is an odd little film, at oncearid, affectless, yet painfully romantic. Truffaut's first color film,it is a studied canvas of reds and blues...searching for a patch ofgreen. The famous last sequence of the Book People strolling through theforest, reciting the texts they have become, lies somewhere betweenGodard and Monty Python, and one could do worse. (JB)