Slaughterhouse-Five (film)

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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."

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.

Differences from the novel

• 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 WWII 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.

Music

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.

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)