I love Truffaut, but his work felt shackled by the source material, which may have been intentional. Still a shackled Truffaut is better than the average film. Interestingly Truffaut’s vision of the alternative to the oppressive regime is similarly cut off from real human emotions, acting like a different kind of drug addict, also destroying what they love, in some sense suppressing their humanity to help keep culture and the past alive for the future. Both the book & film are prophetic. Fahrenheit 451 is dated–something trying to be futuristic, but failing to escape the confines of its period–versus committed to a specific period, a palette, & this film is the latter. I don’t think that he was trying to be futuristic. He made it in the 60s & that is what this film looks like-high end 60s.