Production
Sonia Brownell, Orwell's widow, owned the film rights to the famed novel. Shortly before her death in 1980, Brownell eventually agreed to allow the film to be produced only under the condition that no futuristic special effects be used.
The glowering, ever-watchful visage of Big Brother was provided by Bob Flag, a non-professional who was cast in the role after answering an open-casting call by the filmmakers in London.
For the role of O'Brien, Paul Scofield, Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery and Rod Steiger were all previously considered. Richard Burton joined the production six weeks into its shooting schedule.
Production on the film occurred in and around London from April to June 1984. Some scenes were shot on the actual days noted in Winston's diary (for example: April 4, 1984) as well as at some of the actual locations and settings mentioned in Orwell’s novel.
Michael Radford and cinematographer Roger Deakins originally wanted to shoot the film in black and white, but the financial backers of the production, Virgin Films, opposed this idea. Instead Deakins used a film processing technique called bleach bypass to create the distinctive washed-out look of the film's colour visuals. The film is a very rare example of the technique being done on every release print, rather than the internegative or interpositive; as the silver is retained in the print and the lab is unable to reclaim the silver, so the cost is higher, but the retained silver gives a "depth" to the projected image.
The film is dedicated to the memory of Richard Burton, as this was his last acting role; he died in Switzerland two months before the British premiere date.
Read more about this topic: Nineteen Eighty-Four (film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“... this dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)