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 of the ultimate dictatorship, and the movie faithfully followed him. Some of the details were:

(1) Continual surveillance, in this case carried out by cameras hidden inside television sets.

(2) Decaying infrastructure and shoddy merchandise produced by the Party's monopoly of the economy.

(3) A political language, NewSpeak, full of euphemisms and code words for the government's activities.

(4) A brutal law-enforcement system in which being suspected even of disloyal THOUGHTS can bring barbaric punishment.

The movie stars John Hurt as the beaten rebel, Susanna Hamilton as his mistress, and Richard Burton as the government official on whom they pin their hopes (like Orwell himself, Burton was fatally ill during the production and died before the movie's release)