Winston Smith is a government employee whose job involves the rewriting of history in a manner that casts his fictional country's leaders in a charitable light. His trysts with Julia provide his only measure of enjoyment, but lawmakers frown on the relationship -- and in this closely monitored society, there is no escape from Big Brother.

John Hurt
as Winston Smith

Richard Burton
as O'Brien

Suzanna Hamilton
as Julia

Cyril Cusack
as Charrington

Gregor Fisher
as Parsons

James Walker
as Syme

Andrew Wilde
as Tillotson

David Cann
as Martin

Peter Frye
as Rutherford

Roger Lloyd Pack
as Waiter
CharlesTheBold
Based on George Orwell's dystopian novel from the 1940s, the movie was produced in the very year that Orwell had set it, 1984. Horrified by the recent atrocities by the Germans and Russians, and fearing that England and America might take a similar turn, Orwell had painted a frightening portrait...
Peter McGinn
Do not watch this movie if you are feeling pessimistic or depressed, because the kind of catharsis won’t help you. Nineteen-eighty-four is a bleak movie based on a dark novel that paints a totalitarian world that really sucks. Although they don’t merely tell lies over and over until devotees believe...
CinemaSerf
This adaptation is a fairly faithful, if a little too abridged, version of the Orwellian story of absolute power, sedition and oppression but it's really John Hurt who makes this version stand out. His performance as the weedy "Winston" - a low level bureaucrat in the Ministry of Truth, is visceral ...