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

Slaughterhouse-Five The saucy and the Movie In 1972 director George Roy cumulation released his screenadaptation of Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five (or TheChildrens Crusade A Duty Dance With Death). The image madeover 4 million dollars and was touted as an artistic supremacy by Vonnegut (Film Comment, 41). In fact, in aninterview with Film Comment in 1985, Vonnegut called thefilm a flawless translation of his novel, which can beconsidered an clean assessment in light of his reviews ofother adaptations of his works Happy Birthday, Wanda June(1971) glowering out so abominably that he asked to have hisname take away 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 go of other Vonnegut novels havebeen optioned, but the film projects have either been prone during production or never advanced bey ond anunproduced screenplay adaptation, indicating the difficultyof translating Vonnegut to the funds screen. So why doesSlaughterhouse-Five succeed where others fail? The answerlies in how the antecedent is interpreted on screen. Overall,while there are some discrepancies that pay up varyingresults, the film is a faithful adaptation that succeeds intranslating the printed haggle into visual elements andsounds which convincingly convey the novels themes. While Vonneguts literary style is real noticeable inSlaughterhouse-Five, the novel as a whole differs from the mass of his other works because it is personal with aninteresting point of view techniq... ...kle each time I watch that film,because it is so harmonious with what I mat up when I wrotethe book (Film Comment 41). Whether or not someone who hasnot read the novel could get some meaning from the film is lumbering to decide, but if one considers that it would take justab out as bulky to watch the movie as it would to read thebook, the decision should be obvious. working 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.