Themes: Time Travel, Benign Aliens, Midlife Crises
Main Cast: Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, Eugene Roche, Sharon Gans, Valerie Perrine
Release Year: 1972
Country: US
Run Time: 104 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
"Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." These opening words of Kurt Vonnegut's famous novel make an effective and short summary of a haunting, funny film. For the screen, director George Roy Hill faithfully renders Vonnegut's black anti-war comedy about Pilgrim (well played in a low key by Michael Sacks), who survives the horrendous 1945 fire bombing of Dresden then lives simultaneously in his past as a naïve American POW and in the future as a well-cared-for zoo resident on the planet Tralfamadore (with zaftig Valerie Perrine as his mate). In the present, he's a middle-aged optometrist in Ilium, NY. If this sounds like a bit of a jumble -- it is. But viewers willing to watch carefully will find the movie as intricate and harmonious as Glenn Gould's plaintive renderings of the Bach keyboard pieces that decorate its soundtrack. It's not essential, but fans who read the short, poetic book will find it a treat in itself, and it will help them appreciate Hill's genius in bringing this "Children's Crusade" to the screen. In addition to Sacks, there are noteworthy performances by Ron Leibman (Norma's union man in Norma Rae) as Pilgrim's crazed nemesis and by radio/TV/movie legend, John Dehner as the arrogant Professor Rumfoord. Hill, of course, came to this film from a big hit, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and went on to triumph with The Sting one year later. The elaborate medieval and baroque architecture of pre-bombing Dresden was represented authentically in the film by scenes from Prague, since much of Dresden's architecture was lost to the bombing, and that city, in any case, was deep in East Germany, thus inaccessible at the time of filming. ~ Michael P. Rogers, All Movie Guide
Review
In tackling a big-screen adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut's classic novel about a man who becomes temporally unstuck, director George Roy Hill and screenwriter Stephen Geller took on an unenviable task. Chief among their challenges was how to keep the viewer oriented within the story, when the protagonist himself is in a constant state of disorientation. As it turns out, following the scattershot rhythms of the novel works pretty well, provided the various timelines proceed forward more or less chronologically. The film shrewdly accomplishes this by using Billy Pilgrim's POW experience as a narrative through line, only mildly tempering Vonnegut's trademark structural wildness in the process. Michael Sacks gets Billy's essential passivity down perfectly. By lingering only temporarily in the moments of his life, Billy is rarely present enough to be anything more than an observer, a man without the spine to keep from getting cuffed around by life's bullies and hardships. However, Billy isn't tragic either; his gradual understanding of his own state of consciousness, provided by an alien race who keep him caged as a zoo attraction (with a Hollywood starlet as his companion), allows him to harmonize with the perpetual now-ness of the past, present and future. As the discussion thus far indicates, Slaughterhouse-Five is no walk in the part on a Sunday afternoon. Fans attuned to Vonnegut's unique wavelength and black humor are likely to get more out of the film than those coming in cold. However, a second viewing is well worthwhile if it means bringing the uninitiated on board with this original and finely crafted film, from a director in the midst of his creative peak. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
Alexander Golitzen - Art Director, George C. Webb - Art Director, Ray Gosnell, Jr. - First Assistant Director, George Roy Hill - Director, Dede Allen - Editor, Glenn Gould - Composer (Music Score), Mark Reedall - Makeup, John Chambers - Makeup Special Effects, Henry Bumstead - Production Designer, Miroslav Ondrícek - Cinematographer, Lloyd Anderson - Production Manager, Ernest B. Wehmeyer - Production Manager, Jennings Lang - Producer, Paul Monash - Producer, John McCarthy - Set Designer, James R. Alexander - Sound/Sound Designer, Stephen Geller - Screenwriter, Johann Sebastian Bach - Featured Music, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - Book Author
"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 follows the novel in presenting a first-person narrative from the point of view of Billy Pilgrim, who becomes "unstuck in time" and experiences the events of his life in a seemingly random order, including a period spent on the alien planet of Tralfamadore. Particular emphasis is placed on his experiences during World War II, including the bombing of Dresden in World War II, as well as time spent with 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 by Near and King respectively) 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. The scenes of extraterrestrial life on Trafalmadore feature Hollywood starlet and fellow abductee Montana Wildhack (played by Perrine).
Differences from the novel
In addition to the condensation, there are a number of differences between the novel and the film, including the following:
The entire prologue in which Vonnegut meets with his old war buddy and decides to name his story 'The Children's Crusade' is omitted to focus on the 'fictionalized' story of Billy Pilgrim. The opening scene, which focuses many times on Billy typing a letter to the editor of the newspaper, is actually set much later in the novel.
Several elements of the novel are missing from the film. Two characters, Kilgore Trout and Vonnegut himself, are omitted. The sequence in the novel where Pilgrim watches a movie about a bombing mission in World War II forward and then backward is also omitted, even though Vonnegut regretted it, because it would not work inside the time constraints of the film.[citation needed] The novel includes repeated references to insects in amber, which are missing from the film. Pilgrim's abduction scene is longer in the novel, but also misses details, such as 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.
In the film, Derby's execution 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 one in a letter to his wife, is also unique to the film.
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 25, 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.
Welcome to the Monkey House (1970, 1974) ·Sirens of Titan (1974) ·Cat's Cradle (1976) ·God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1979) ·Breakfast of Champions (1984) ·Requiem (Stone, Time, and Elements: A Humanist Requiem) (1988) ·Slaughterhouse-Five (1996)
