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Slaughterhouse-Five
original film poster
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
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Slaughterhouse-Five is an award-winning 1972 film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same name. The screenplay is by Stephen Geller and the film was 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. The scenes set in Dresden were filmed in Prague.^[1]

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 follows the novel is 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 Trafalmador feature Hollywood starlet and fellow abductee Montana Wildhack (played by Perrine).

In addition to the inevitable 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 ommited to focus on the 'fictionalized' story of Billy Pilgrim. In addition, 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.

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 forwards and then backwards 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.

The film conflates the characters of Paul Lazzaro and Roland Weary into a character who both nurtures a grudge against Pilgrim as well as assassinates him.

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.

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.

• Review of the film by Vincent Canby
• Detailed review of the film and its differences from the novel
• 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