The party knows that the present controls the future by controlling the past.īefore that, however, he becomes involved in a brief, ecstatic love affair with Julia (Suzanna Hamilton), a reckless, similarly disenchanted young woman, who also works at the Ministry of Truth, and is befriended by O'Brien (Richard Burton), an urbane member of the Inner Party, someone who may know the truth about the existence of a political underground. When Oceania makes peace with Eurasia and joins Eurasia in a war against Eastasia, Winston must bring the war chronicles up to date, unwriting history, which itself is a full-time job since Oceania is alternately at war with one or the other. When someone falls out of Government favor and is ''vaporized,'' Winston must go through the newspapers and official records and erase the person's name, creating an unperson. The ministry is devoted to the adjustment of history to conform to the party's latest policies.

As a member of what is called the Outer Party, he works for the Government - run by the members of the Inner Party - in the Ministry of Truth, which, in the Newspeak vocabulary of Oceania, means lies. Winston's life is not much different from that of any other citizen of this particular London. When he goes to work, dressed in the dark blue overalls that are the standard uniform for Oceania's women as well as men, he walks through rubble-filled streets, past huge posters filled with the enigmatic likeness of Oceania's beloved leader, Big Brother, who is always watching. He lives alone in a drab one- room flat furnished with a cot, a table and a chair, all dominated by a giant television screen, which monitors him even as he is monitoring it.

Winston Smith (John Hurt) is 39, but he has the skinny, wizened look of a perpetually chilled, undernourished child, whose face is that of an old man. THE time is a mythical 1984 and the place London, the capital of that part of Oceania known as Airstrip One.

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