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

Slaughterhouse-Five The Novel and the Movie In 1972 manager George Roy Hill released his screenadaptation of Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five (or TheChildrens Crusade A Duty saltation With Death). The dissipate madeover 4 million dollars and was touted as an exquisitesuccess by Vonnegut (Film chitchat, 41). In fact, in aninter side with Film gossiper 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 prosperous Birthday, Wanda June(1971) turned out so abominably that he asked to have his strike removed from it and he found Slapstick of Another Kind(1984) to be perfectly 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 both beenabandoned during production or never a dvanced beyond anunproduced screenplay adaptation, indicating the botherof 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 convey the novels themes. While Vonneguts literary way is very noticeable inSlaughterhouse-Five, the novel as a safe and sound differs from themajority of his other works because it is personal with aninteresting 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 somebody who hasnot read the novel could get some meaning from the film ishard to decide, but if one considers that it would take jus tabout as long to watch the movie 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 dinglePublishing, 1968.