Slaughterhouse-Five (film)

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Slaughterhouse-Five
Directed by	George Roy Hill
Produced by	Paul Monash
Written by	Stephen Geller, based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Starring	Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, and Valerie Perrine
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	March 15, 1972 (USA)
Running time	104 min.
Language	English
Budget	n/a
IMDb profile

Slaughterhouse-Five is a film adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel of the same name. The 1972 drama was written by Stephen Geller and directed by George Roy Hill. It stars Michael Sacks (in his first film), Ron Leibman, and Valerie Perrine, and features Eugene Roche, Sharon Gans, Holly Near, and Perry King.

Vonnegut wrote about the film soon after its release, in his preface to Between Time and Timbuktu:

"I love George Roy Hill and Universal Pictures, who made a flawless translation of my novel Slaughterhouse-Five to the silver screen.

I drool and cackle every time I watch that film, because it is so harmonious with what I felt when I wrote the book."

The film won the Prix du Jury at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, as well as a Hugo Award, and Saturn Award. Both Hill and Geller were nominated for awards by their respective guilds.

Sacks plays Billy Pilgrim, the film's protagonist. The film is a faithful (and successful) condensation of Vonnegut's novel, presented through Pilgrim's eyes. Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time" and experiences the events of his life in a seemingly-random order. The events take place throughout his life, with particular emphasis on his experiences during World War II alongside fellow prisoners of war Edgar Derby (played by Roche) and the psychopathic Paul Lazzaro (played by Leibman). His life as a husband to Valencia (played by Gans), and father to Barbara and Robert (played, respectively, by Near and King) are also depicted, as they live and sometimes even enjoy their life of affluence in Ilium, New York. A "sink-or-swim" scene with Pilgrim's father is also featured.

Most unusual are the scenes of Pilgrim's extraterrestrial life on Tralfamadore, with Hollywood starlet and fellow abductee Montana Wildhack (played by Perrine). Yet it is the bombing of Dresden in World War II which serves as the critical event motivating the themes of the film as a whole.

Contents 1 Differences from the novel 2 Music 3 Trivia 4 External links

[edit] Differences from the novel

In addition to the inevitable condensation, there are a number of differences between the novel and the film, including the following:

• The opening scene, in which the camera often focuses on a letter Pilgrim is typing to the editor of the local newspaper, is not from the novel.
• The repeated "insects in amber" analogies are missing.
• Pilgrim's abduction scene is different and longer in the novel. Details missing include the appearance of the flying saucer, said to be 100 feet in diameter, with purple light pulsating around the saucer's portholes along the rim.
• Derby's execution in the film happens immediately after he innocently takes a small porcelain figurine from among the ruins of Dresden. In the novel, he is put on trial first, and is executed for taking a teapot. The scene that sets up the significance of the figurine, where Derby mentions such a figurine in a letter to his wife, is also unique to the film.
• Two characters in the novel, Kilgore Trout and Vonnegut himself, are missing from the film.
• The part of the novel where Pilgrim watches a movie about a bombing mission in World War II forwards and then backwards is also omitted, even though Vonnegut regretted it, simply because it would not work inside the time constraints of the film.

[edit] Music

Slaughterhouse-Five is the first of two feature films for which Glenn Gould supplied the music. In this case it is in the form of needle drops from his Bach catalog, including Goldberg Variations Variation 18 (Canone alla sesta), and a performance recorded just for the film of the third ("Presto") movement from Brandenburg Concerto #4 in G major. Gould's soundtrack actually included so little music in elapsed time, that the soundtrack album added atmospheric excerpts from Douglas Leedy's synthesized double album Entropical Paradise.

[edit] Trivia

• John Dehner has a scene as an arrogant professor writing about Dresden (and uninterested in hearing Pilgrim's first-hand experiences).
• The scenes set in Dresden were filmed in Prague.

[edit] External links

• Review of the film by Vincent Canby
• Detailed review of the film and its differences from the novel, from a fan's well-regarded website
• Glenn Gould at the Movies, a Sony Classical recording with music from the film (including this 46-second clip in WAV format)
• Slaughterhouse-Five at the Internet Movie Database

Films Directed by George Roy Hill

Period of Adjustment | Toys in the Attic | The World of Henry Orient | Hawaii | Thoroughly Modern Millie | Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid | Slaughterhouse-Five | The Sting | The Great Waldo Pepper | Slap Shot | A Little Romance | The World According to Garp | The Little Drummer Girl | Funny Farm