I wrote this a long time ago.
Brian Rodriguez
11/29/94

	In 1972 director George Roy Hill released his screen adaptation of
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (or The Children's Crusade; A Duty
Dance With Death).  The film made over 4 million dollars and was touted as
an "artistic success" by Vonnegut (Film Comment, 41).  In fact, in an
interview with Film Comment in 1985, Vonnegut called the film a "flawless
translation" of his novel, which can be considered an honest assessment in
light of his reviews of other adaptations of his works:  Happy Birthday,
Wanda June (1971) "turned out so abominably" that he asked to have his
name removed from it; and he found Slapstick of Another Kind (1984) to be
"perfectly horrible" (41,44).  (This article was writen prior to
Showtime's Harrison Bergeron, and Fine Line's Mother Night).  A number of
other Vonnegut novels have been optioned, but the film projects have
either been abandoned during production or never advanced beyond an
unproduced screenplay adaptation, indicating the difficulty of translating
Vonnegut to the silver screen.  So why does Slaughterhouse-Five succeed
where others fail?  The answer lies in how the source is interpreted on
screen.  Overall, while there are some discrepancies that yield varying
results, the film is a faithful adaptation that succeeds in translating
the printed words into visual elements and sounds which convincingly
convey the novel's themes.
	While Vonnegut's literary style is very noticeable in 
Slaughterhouse-Five, the novel as a whole differs from the majority of 
his other works because it is personal with an interesting point of view 
technique that reflects Vonnegut's own experiences in World War II and 
specifically, the fire-bombing of Dresden.  Slaughterhouse-Five has two 
narrators, an impersonal one and a personal one, resulting in a novel not 
only about Dresden but also about the actual act of writing a novel - in 
this case a novel about an event that has shaped the author profoundly.  
The novel's themes of cruelty, innocence, free will, regeneration, 
survival, time, and war recur throughout Vonnegut's novels, as do some of 
his characters, which are typically caricatures of ideas with little 
depth.  Another mainstay is his use of historical and fictional sources, 
and yet another is his preference for description over dialogue.  These 
aspects of Vonnegut's literary style make the adaptation of Vonnegut to 
the screen all the more difficult.  Ironically, many Vonnegut novels flow 
with a cinematic fluidity.  As described in Film Comment, "Vonnegut's 
literary vocabulary has included the printed page equivalents of 
jump-cuts, montages, fades, and flashbacks.  And his printed pace even 
feels filmic, as he packs his scenes tightly together, butting them 
against each other for maximum, often jarring, effect" (42).
	Slaughterhouse-Five, as the title page points out, is written by 
"a fourth-generation German-American" who fought as "an American infantry 
scout" and who "as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of 
Dresden ... and survived to tell the tale."  It is a "novel somewhat in 
the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore" 
in that "there is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no 
moral..." - only moments strung together in beautiful random order that 
produce an image of life that is surprising and deep (88).  It is an 
innovative story of a man named Billy Pilgrim who, like the author, has 
survived the Dresden fire-bombing but who also has an uncontrollable 
ability to become "unstuck" in time.  Billy is also special in that he 
lives part of his life in a zoo on the distant planet of Tralfamadore 
which is inhabited by little green men who can see in four dimensions.  
The novel is structured without regard to chronological order, reflecting 
the philosophies of the Tralfamadorians and the fact that "Billy is 
spastic in time" (23).  The main emphasis of Slaughterhouse-Five is on 
the long range effects of Billy's upbringing, experiences, and 
interactions with others.  As Monica Loeb illustrates, "the novel 
demonstrates how the human soul reacts and tries to recover from 
atrocities" (73).  This occurs on both a fictional level and on the 
author's level, and it can be said that like Billy, Vonnegut at first 
"retreats into a personal sphere [after the war] and gradually emerges 
into a prophetic mission" (73).
	For the most part, Stephen Geller's script adheres closely to the 
source, and thematically speaking the adaptation is near perfection 
despite some deletions and alterations.  Since it would be pointless to 
analyze every single change, only significant ones will be examined.  
First of all, in the novel, Edgar Derby's execution is wonderful because 
as the personal narrator points out, "the irony is so great.  A whole 
city gets burned down, and thousands and thousands of people are killed.  
And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for 
taking a teapot.  And he's given a regular trial and shot by a firing 
squad" (4).  To top it off, during the trial, Billy is forced to stand by 
with a shovel to bury Derby with if he is found guilty.  In the movie 
however there is no trial, significantly deflating the irony, and Billy 
is not forced to stand by with shovel in hand.  Moreover, Derby is not 
executed for taking a teapot, but rather for taking a small porcelain 
figurine of a dancer.  Having Billy stand beside the epitome of all that 
is good in the novel during the trial only serves to enhance Billy's  
innocence,  his helplessness, and the focus of the novel.
	The movie version of Derby's execution, while failing to capture 
the irony and helplessness of Billy, succeeds in adding depth to Derby 
and hence his loss seems all the more great and horrible.  In the movie, 
Derby reads a letter he plans to send his wife to Billy.  In that letter 
he says he is being moved to Dresden, "the town where our little 
porcelain dancing figure came from... Remember the one that Johnny 
broke?"  After finding a porcelain figurine in the rubble of what was 
once Dresden, he shows it to Billy with a look of joy perhaps 
unparalleled in the movie.  He then explains how it is identical to the 
one his son broke and how happy his wife will be to see it as he puts it 
into his pocket and walks away.  Without Billy's knowledge, Derby is 
dragged away by three soldiers and shot in the background of the scene as 
two other soldiers in the foreground chat and toss the figurine back into 
the ruins.  The differences in the adaptation give more character to 
Derby and add to the themes of war, cruelty, and free will, as Billy is 
helpless to stop the senseless execution.
	One passage the film neglects to incorporate, probably because it 
would only serve as a reinforcement of other scenes and lack the same 
power without a narrator, is perhaps the most beautifully written passage 
of the novel, when Billy watches a war movie backwards.  While the film 
version does not lose meaning with the omission, it is just another 
example of the superiority of the novel.  Here is a brief excerpt of 
Billy's wish fulfillment which ultimately ends with Hitler as an innocent 
Baby:
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were ... 
shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were 
operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the 
dangerous contents into minerals.  Touchingly, it was mainly women who 
did this work.  The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote 
areas.  it was their business ... to hide them cleverly, so they would 
never hurt anyone again (74-75).	
	One of the major themes of Slaughterhouse-Five is that 
individuals are truly "bugs in amber," physically stuck, but retaining 
their imagination.  Essentially the entire novel comes down to this one 
point; a hint of optimism in a dismal picture of the world.  In the 
novel, the phrase "bugs in amber" is used with some regularity, and 
enclosed spaces abound - from an actual cave, to a train car, to the zoo, 
and even to the enclosed space of prenatal "red light and bubbling 
sounds."  These enclosed spaces signify Billy's physical entrapment in 
amber.  In the movie no reference is made to "bugs in amber," and yet the 
same effect is created with shots that always seem to include the 
ceiling, creating a sense of enclosure.  As in the novel, these 'caves' 
can be unpleasant, scary, and associated with death, or they can be a 
place of survival and security.
	Despite the fact that Billy learns something or is affected in 
some way  by every person or alien he encounters in the novel, the movie 
neglects to include Kilgore Trout and Vonnegut himself, who actually 
appears as a "listless plaything" in his own work of fiction.  These 
omissions are reasonable considering the medium they are a part of, and 
hence difficult to adapt to film.  Ultimately Trout's presence in the 
novel serves to indicate Vonnegut's ideas of the role an author has in 
society.  Trout also serves as a projection of the author, and his books 
provide Billy (and the reader) with new perspectives on his (or her) 
existence, the human condition, and with criticisms of society.
	Not only does Vonnegut impersonally and almost-omnisciently 
narrate Billy's life in chapters 2-9, but he narrates his own struggle to 
write the novel and in essence explains the novel on a personal level in 
chapters 1 and 10.  These introductory and concluding chapters also place 
the novel in perspective by re-entering reality and helping the reader to 
further extrapolate Billy's journey through space, time, and war to that 
of every person through references to [then] present day Robert Kennedy's 
assassination and Vietnam.  Vonnegut finished the novel two nights after 
Kennedy was shot, and he makes a point of telling the reader.  It is this 
sense of Billy Pilgrim as everyman that the film does not completely 
develop.   Additionally, the narrator makes four references to himself in 
chapters 2-9.  In one instance the narrator notes that someone calls 
Dresden "Oz."  He continues with, "that was I.  That was me."  This is 
the only intrusion that is retained in the film, however it is Billy who 
utters "Oz" since there is no narrator in the film, aside from the 
camera, and the typewriter from the film's introduction.
	Although the use of a narrator might make an interesting 
adaptation, George Roy Hill opted to let the camera tell the story, and 
while the overall effect crafted by Vonnegut is lost in translation, the 
film succeeds in capturing its essence.  In fact, at times the film 
surpasses the novel in its transitions from one time and location to 
another.  The film opens with a scene that is not directly in the novel 
in which an older Billy types a letter to the editor of the local paper 
explaining what he is experiencing.  This scene serves as an introduction 
to the movie, and the typed words (which the camera directs our attention 
to) effectively take the place of the personal narrator of chapter one 
(minus the authorial presence of Vonnegut), and to some extent the 
impersonal narrator of chapter two in which Vonnegut reveals the entire 
plot.  As Billy types, the sound of the typewriter echoes through the 
large empty house, and the viewer witnesses for the first time what Billy 
means by becoming "unstuck in time."  Throughout the movie, the camera 
directs the viewer to what should be seen much like the narrator of the 
novel, whether it is what Billy sees through his innocent eyes, or 
something that takes place somewhere else.
	Frequently the transitions used in the movie take root in the 
novel, but the film also creates original transitions.  One of the better 
examples of these fluid transitions, original or otherwise,  representing 
Billy's jumps through time occurs when Billy pulls a blanket over his 
head while on the train to the prison camp.  The camera lets us see 
things from Billy's perspective, and when he lifts the cover up we no 
longer see the hobo telling Billy how he has survived worse places 
(Incidentally, he dies shortly thereafter.), but instead we see Billy's 
mom.  Of course, we only see her for a second, as Billy quickly pulls the 
blanket over his face when she sees him, partially because "she had gone 
to so much trouble to give him life ... and Billy didn't really like life 
at all" (102).
	Another of the more imaginative transitions occurs while Billy is 
taking a shower at the prison camp.  As the rush of water begins, the 
camera slowly tilts upward to the shower head and then back down.  
Instead of seeing a prisoner of war, the camera's movement reveals a 
young Billy taking a shower.  Then in one of the greatest scenes from the 
book and the movie, Billy's father picks Billy up and throws him into a 
pool with the instruction to "sink-or-swim."  In typical fashion, Billy 
chooses death over life, signifying that authoritarian manners do not 
provoke him even when his life is on the line, as is later demonstrated 
while he is in the war.
	One instance of the film succeeding in adapting a transition from 
the novel into an original filmic transition occurs as Billy is having 
his picture taken while a prisoner of war.  In the novel, this leads into 
Billy getting his picture taken at his wedding.  The movie on the other 
hand, combines the two scenes into one montage with Billy "time tripping" 
back and forth  between the two, demonstrating that its all the same to 
Billy.  The preceding examples all show how the film successfully 
translates the novel on screen while still enforcing the novel's themes - 
especially Billy's innocence in the above cases.  But it would be 
impossible to translate the novel completely without at least trying to 
visually incorporate the most frequently used words in the entire novel.
	Eventhough Joyce Nelson is correct when she says, "the emotional 
detachment created in the novel by the reoccurrence of the phrase 'So it 
goes,' is lacking in the film," it is hard not to notice abrupt jump cuts 
in the film that seem to cinematically scream, "So it goes" (150).  
Several examples are the abrupt cuts following Derby's death, the crash 
of the airplane, and after Lazzaro tells Derby to take a "flying fuck."  
In his interview with Film Comment,  Vonnegut also points this out:  
"Everytime somebody's killed, WHAM:  They cut instantly.  There's no time 
... to weep and say ... what a good guy he was... Nothing.  Cut to a 
radically different situation before you even have time to regret the 
death." (43).  While there are instances as described by Vonnegut, the 
level of emotional detachment created by the fatalistic chant in the 
novel is not present in the film.  At one point, the camera remains 
steadily focused for several seconds on a pile of burning corpses, a shot 
that does not elicit emotional detachment.
	Slaughterhouse-Five is also wonderful because of its constant use 
of descriptive imagery, whether it pertains to war, animals, sounds or 
smells.  The film handles the visual imagery well; Billy really does look 
like a clown bopping up and down in his fur-collared impressario's coat 
and silver boots, but other imagery would be hard to duplicate.  After 
all, how does one show that Weary's face is like a "toad in a fishbowl" 
(48)?  Moreover, while the film usually retains Vonnegut's colorful 
descriptive imagery, there are times when the film does not even come 
close.  For example, the train in the novel is likened to a "single 
organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilators.  It 
talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too.  In went water 
and loaves of black bread ... and out came shit and piss and language" 
(70).  The train in the movie is just that - a train.  The olfactory 
imagery is not noticeable in the movie, but the auditory imagery is 
translated successfully for the most part.  In the novel, "sound is used 
to reinforce the negative effect already established by the war imagery," 
as Monica Loeb points out (101).  In the movie however, few direct links 
to passages in the book exist; nevertheless, the net effect of the 
ambiguity of the sounds used in the film serves the same purpose as the 
negative loud sounds in the novel - they both make Billy relate sounds of 
harmless, innocent things to war.  In the film there are many transitions 
facilitated by sounds.  This is accomplished through the forced 
similarities between typing sounds, gun shots, applause, screams, bombs, 
an airplane crash, tanks, electric shock treatments, and trains.
	The use of sound does not end with sound effects however, as 
music is also incorporated into the film.  When the young German soldiers 
and their old commander assemble at the train station to greet the 
American prisoners, classical piano is played in the background.  As the 
"children" march, bumping into each other, the music makes the whole 
scene seem like a joke, emphasizing their child-like innocence - hence 
the subtitle, The Children's Crusade.  The theme of "The Children's 
Crusade" is portrayed equally well in the novel and in the film.  
Classical music is also played as the prisoners walk the streets of 
Dresden.  The camera cuts between shots of young, smiling Germans, 
Billy's look of awe, children playing in the street, and city landmarks 
as the music plays, adding to the beauty of Dresden, and augmenting its 
senseless loss.
	In his interview with Film Comment, Vonnegut says his "books are 
essentially rational, built more around ideas I want to discuss than 
characters I want to analyze ... I'm not that interested in individual 
lives" (41).  The movie successfully portrays each character it retains 
from the book, and in the case of Paul Lazzaro, with surprising success.  
In the novel, Lazzaro is pure evil and Ron Leibman plays him so 
believably it makes one wonder if such a person could actually exist.  In 
essence, Lazzaro and Derby are a foil, a fact not only emphasized in 
their behavior and confrontations in both the film and the novel, but 
also through an effect with no direct parallel to the novel in which 
action in the foreground frames action in the background.  For example, 
as Derby reads the letter to Billy, Lazzaro can be seen in the corner of 
the train car.  Billy tells Derby he must be "the greatest father in the 
world" to which Derby replies, "I love my son Billy.  I guess that's all 
it takes."  In the background and then with a match cut we see Lazzaro's 
reaction to the profuse goodness, which is a look of disgust as he bangs 
his head into the wall of the car.
	Although Slaughterhouse-Five does not capture the full meaning or 
the overall effect of the novel, it is a faithful adaptation that is able 
to portray the themes of the novel as a moving picture.  At times the 
movie falls short of the expectations set by the novel, and occasionally, 
the movie excels where the novel falters.  In writing the novel, Vonnegut 
could freely do as he pleased, but producing a movie has additional 
considerations, such as a limited budget, time restraints, and a lack of 
resources.  In other words, there is room for improvement.  The emotional 
detachment created by the repetition of "So it goes," the use of 
historical and fictional sources, and Vonnegut's simple yet humorously 
elegant descriptions are definitely missing from the adaptation.  On the 
other hand, who am I to argue with Vonnegut, who had the following to 
say:  "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" (Film Comment 41).  
Whether or not someone who has not read the novel could get some meaning 
from the film is hard to decide, but if one considers that it would take 
just about as long to watch the movie as it would to read the book, the 
decision should be obvious.

Works Cited

Bianculli, David.  "A Kurt Post-mortem on the Generally Eclectic 
Theatre."  Film Comment  Nov.-Dec.  1985: 41-44.
Loeb, Monica.  Vonnegut's Duty-Dance With Death.  UMEA, 1979. (I HIGHLY 
RECOMMEND READING THIS ONE)
Nelson, Joyce.  "Slaughterhouse-Five: Novel and Film."  Literature/Film 
Quarterly. 1 (1973): 149-153.
Slaughterhouse-Five, dir. George Roy Hill, with Michael Sacks, Universal 
Pictures, 1972.
Vonnegut, Kurt.  Slaughterhouse-Five.  New York: Dell Publishing, 1968.

 

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