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
We (novel) with some similarities to Zamyatin's; Nabokov read "We" while writing "Invitation to a Beheading". Orwell began "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949) some eight months after he read "We" in a French translation and wrote a review of it. Orwell is reported as "saying that he was taking it as the model for his next novel". Brown writes that for Orwell and certain others, "We" "appears to have been "the" crucial literary experience". Shane states that "Zamyatin's influence on Orwell is beyond dispute". Robert Russell, in an overview of the criticism of "We", concludes that ""1984" shares so many features with "We" that