1984 (1956 film) 1984 (1956 film) 1984 is a 1956 British black-and-white science fiction film, based on the novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell, depicting a totalitarian future society. This is the first cinema rendition of the story, directed by Michael Anderson and starring Edmond O'Brien as protagonist Winston Smith, and featuring Donald Pleasence, Jan Sterling, and Michael Redgrave. The character O'Brien, the antagonist, was renamed "O'Connor", due to the shared surname of the actor Edmond O'Brien. The film was distributed in 1956 on a double bill with another British sci-fi film, "The Gamma People". After the customary distributor agreement expired, the film
George Orwell 'The Lion and the Unicorn' – and his contribution to Gollancz's symposium "The Betrayal of the Left" that he does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him." Sexual Politics plays an important role in the Nineteen Eighty-Four novel. In the novel humans intimate relationships are strictly governed by the party, Junior Anti-Sex League, by opposing sexual relations and instead encouraging artificial insemination. Personally Orwell disliked what he thought as misguided middle-class revolutionary emancipatory views, expressing disdain for ‘every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniacs Orwell was also openly against homosexuality. Speaking at the 2003 George Orwell Centenary Conference,