1984 by George Orwell – watch the 1954 version

BBC Box’s live production of George Orwell’s “1984″. Bent in 1954. Creative Commons license: Public Domain. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic dystopian novel by English author George Orwell. Published in 1949, it is set in the eponymous year and focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime. The tale follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of falsifying records and political literature, thus effectively perpetuating propaganda, who grows disillusioned with his meagre existence and so starts a rebellion hostile to the system.

The novel has become well-known for its portrayal of surveillance and society’s increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual. Since its publication the terms Huge Brother and Orwellian have entered the well loved vernacular. Orwell, who had “encapsulated the thesis at the heart of his novel” in 1944, wrote most of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the island of Jura, Scotland, during 19471948 even as critically ill with tuberculosis. He sent the final typescript to his friends Secker and Warburg on 4 December 1948 and the book was published on 8 June 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 50 languages. The novel’s title, its terms, its language Newspeak, and its author’s surname are bywords for personal privacy lost to national state security. The adjective “Orwellian” denotes many things. It can refer to totalitarian action or establishment, as well as governmental …

via 1984 by George Orwell / Nineteen Eighty-Four / Film Movie.