Slaughterhouse-Five (film)

Did You Know?

• The film won the inaugural Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film.
• Michael Sacks was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer – Male.

Plot

In Ilium, New York, a middle-aged man named Billy Pilgrim sends a letter to the editor claiming he has become unstuck in time. He then finds himself as a young soldier behind enemy lines in Belgium during World War II, where he and other American troops are taken prisoner by the Germans. Another prisoner, Paul Lazzaro, holds a grudge against Billy and swears to kill him. At a camp, Lazzaro attacks Billy but is stopped by an older prisoner, Edgar Derby.

Billy and Derby grow close. The Americans are moved to Dresden and asked to choose a leader. Lazzaro nominates himself, but Billy puts forward Derby, and after Lazzaro withdraws, Derby is chosen. In Dresden, the prisoners are housed in a slaughterhouse called Slaughterhouse-Five.

During a meal, air raid sirens go off, and the men take shelter. The firebombing of Dresden begins, and Billy believes one hundred thousand people die. Afterward, the Germans have the prisoners search the rubble for survivors and warn that looting will be punished. When Derby finds a small dancing figurine and puts it in his pocket, a Nazi firing squad executes him.

After the war, Billy marries Valencia, who comes from money; her father runs an optometry school, and Billy becomes an optometrist. They have two children, Robert and Barbara. Robert gets into trouble as a teenager, once vandalizing a Catholic cemetery, and Billy pays off the police to let him go. Billy and his father-in-law Lionel Merble fly to an optometry convention on a private jet.

Billy sees men in ski masks outside the window and has a feeling the plane will crash. It does, killing Lionel. Billy survives and is taken to the hospital. On her way there, a panicked Valencia gets into several accidents, her car's exhaust pipe is damaged, and she dies from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Music

The film's soundtrack draws from Glenn Gould's 1950s-1960s recordings of Bach's Concerto #5 in F Minor, BWV 1056, and Concerto #3 in D Major, BWV 1054, both cut at CBS 30th Street Studio with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Additional music includes Rudolf Serkin on piano, with Casals conducting the Presto from Brandenburg Concerto #4 in G Major, BWV 1049. This final movement plays at length during a montage showing the protagonist's first sight of Dresden. So little music appears in the film that the soundtrack album added atmospheric excerpts from Douglas Leedy's triple album Entropical Paradise. None of Holly Near's songs were used, despite her being a cast member and experienced singer-songwriter.