Slaughterhouse-Five: The Novel and the Movie Essay -- Movie Film compa

Slaughterhouse-Five The clean and the Movie In 1972 director George Roy Hill released his screenadaptation of Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five (or TheChildrens Crusade A Duty Dance With Death). The film madeover 4 million dollars and was touted as an artisticsuccess by Vonnegut ( celluloid Comment, 41). In fact, in aninterview with Film Comment in 1985, Vonnegut called thefilm a flawless translation of his novel, which can beconsidered an honest assessment in light of his reviews ofother adaptations of his works skilful Birthday, Wanda June(1971) turned out so abominably that he asked to have hisname removed from it and he found Slapstick of Another Kind(1984) to be absolutely horrible (41,44). (This article waswriten prior to Showtimes Harrison Bergeron, and FineLines Mother Night). A number of other Vonnegut novels havebeen optioned, but the film projects have either beenabandoned during labor or never advanced beyond anun produced screenplay adaptation, indicating the difficultyof translating Vonnegut to the silver screen. So why doesSlaughterhouse-Five succeed where others fail? The answerlies in how the source is interpreted on screen. Overall,while there are some discrepancies that yield varyingresults, the film is a faithful adaptation that succeeds intranslating the printed words into visual elements andsounds which convincingly guide the novels themes. While Vonneguts literary style is very noticeable inSlaughterhouse-Five, the novel as a whole differs from themajority of his other works because it is personal with an raise point of view techniq... ...kle every time I watch that film,because it is so harmonious with what I felt when I wrotethe book (Film Comment 41). Whether or not someone who hasnot read the novel could get some meaning from the film ishard to decide, but if one considers that it would take justabout as long to watch the mo vie as it would to read thebook, the decision should be obvious. Works Cited Bianculli, David. A Kurt Post-mortem on the GenerallyEclectic Theatre. Film Comment Nov.-Dec. 1985 41-44. Loeb, Monica. Vonneguts Duty-Dance With Death. UMEA, 1979. Nelson, Joyce. Slaughterhouse-Five Novel and Film.Literature/Film Quarterly. 1 (1973) 149-153. Slaughterhouse-Five, dir. George Roy Hill, with MichaelSacks, Universal Pictures, 1972. Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York DellPublishing, 1968.