Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

Directed by

George Roy Hill

Genre

drama film, comedy film, science fiction comedy, science fiction film, war film, speculative fiction film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 43m

Rated

R

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 253 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A man named Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time and jumps between moments of his life. He experiences his past as a prisoner of war in World War II, his present as an optometrist, and his future on an alien planet.

unstablesurrealbittersweetabsurdcontemplativenonlineardarkly comic

What happens

Slaughterhouse-Five is a 1972 American comedy-drama military science fiction film directed by George Roy Hill and produced by Paul Monash, from a screenplay by Stephen Geller, based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Kurt Vonnegut. The film stars Michael Sacks as Billy Pilgrim, who is "unstuck in time" and has no control over where he is going next. It also stars Ron Leibman as Paul Lazzaro and Valerie Perrine in her film debut as Montana Wildhack. Slaughterhouse-Five premiered at the 25th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. The film also won a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the inaugural Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film. Sacks was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer – Male for his portrayal of Pilgrim. 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." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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