Slaughterhouse Five (1972)

 

            I had not considered “Slaughterhouse Five” to be a war movie until I recently saw a list of the greatest war movies and it appeared on it.  Even though this was the first time I saw it on one of the many lists of greatest war movies, I decided I needed to review it.  The movie was directed by George Roy Hill (“The Great Waldo Pepper”).  It is based on Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel.  Stephen Geller gets credit for bringing the novel to the screen.  Vonnegut was very complimentary about the film.  It won the Jury Prize at Cannes and won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film.  The character Howard Campbell, Jr. appears in the film and later was the main character in the movie “Mother Night” which is also based on a Vonnegut novel.

            The movie opens with Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) writing a letter to a newspaper claiming that he is “unstuck in time”.  This means he jumps through time, but has no control of it. He is an optometrist in New York, but sometimes he is a prisoner of war in WWII and other times he is an abductee on the planet Tralfamadore.  The narrative is nonlinear.  In the present time, he is in a dysfunctional marriage and has a troublesome son.  He occasionally jumps to WWII where he is taken captive during the Battle of the Bulge.  He is part of a threesome that includes an asshole named Lazzaro (Ron Liebman) and the saintly Derby (Eugene Roche).  They are taken to a slaughterhouse named Slaughterhouse Five in the city of Dresden.  If that name conjures up tragedy, you’ll know that even though they have been told the city is peaceful, that won’t last.  They are there for the terrible fire-bombing of the city.  In the future, Billy is living in a human aquarium with a film starlet named Montana (Valerie Perrine).  The Tralfamadorians want them to breed and they want to watch.

            First, is it a war movie?  Clearly, it fits best in the sci-fi genre, but the WWII scenes allow one to argue it is also a war movie.  I personally would not put it in the genre.  Second, is it a good movie?  Although Vonnegut was happy with it, I was not impressed.  It is a weird film and veers between drama and comedy.  The comedy is highlighted by the slapstick demolition derby death of Pilgrim’s wife.  The film jumps the shark with this scene.  It does not recover its footing.

            Viewed as a war movie, one of the three threads is worthy of the genre.  Unfortunately, the Dresden scenes do not overcome the other two threads.  The destruction of Dresden features a good set showing the ruins of the city.  However, since Billy and the other prisoners are sheltered, we don’t get the full effect of what it must have been like for the civilians.  We do get an appropriately rubbly set.  Which contrasts with the sterile set on the planet.  The Dresden scenes are by far the most intriguing of the three.

            I have not read the book, so I can not comment on how faithful the movie is.  Based on Vonnegut’s reaction, it is worthy rendition.  Since this review is not a comparison to the book, let me just comment about how good a movie it is.  It is certainly a weird film.  The nonlinear structure makes it more memorable than it deserves.  Like Billy’s life, it jerks you to another time with no warning.  This can be jarring.  And it can be frustrating when we leave Dresden for one of the boring scenarios. 

The movie is hurt by the cast.  For such a famous book, the cast is distinctly unimpressive.  Sacks made his debut and it shows. But he is not the only wooden actor in the film.  I theorize that Valerie Perrine was cast for her breasts.  It was her screen debut and she showed what she is most known for.  They are not worth sitting through the movie.  Ron Leibman was on his third movie.  His Lazzaro is a grating character and he brings down the Dresden segments.

I know some of you will be upset that I was not impressed with the movie.  It was acclaimed, but as a science-fiction movie, not as a war movie.  I do like sci-fi and I like war movies that are different from the run of the mill.  However, I found “Slaughterhouse Five” to be overrated.  From what I researched, it does appear to be faithful to the book.  Not surprisingly, it does not have all the characters or incidents.  If you have to write a book report and don’t want to read the novel, the movie will probably get you a passing grade.

GRADE  =  C

BOMB? Dresden (2006)

                “Dresden” is a German TV movie that sets a romance in the bombing of the German city of Dresden in 1945,  It was directed by Roland Richter.  The movie was inspired by the book “Fire” by Jorg Friedrich.  It touches on the controversy of the bombing and tries to put a civilian face on a military decision.

                Anna (Felicitas Woll) is a nurse working in a Dresden hospital.  Her father is the head physician and she is engaged to a doctor named Alexander (Benjamin Sadler).  Since Dresden has not been bombed and she is from an upper class family, Anna’s life  has not been effected much by the war.  This is about to change.  Robert Newman (John Light) is a British Lancaster bomber pilot.  When his bomber is hit, he parachutes and manages to make it to Anna’s hospital where he hides in the basement.  How else are they going to meet and start a romance?  Anna discovers him, nurses him back to health, and they fall in love.  Complications ensue and this is before the massive bombardment begins.  The movie throws in a Jewish subplot to add to the drama. 

                “Dresden” is an entertaining bit of ridiculousness.  It is best if you turn your brain off when viewing it.  The hoops the screenplay has to jump through to keep the love triangle viable are truly circuslike.  And laughable.  For instance, Robert shows up at Anna and Alexander’s engagement party wearing a German uniform.  This is just the first domino in a line of increasingly ludicrous domino falls.  It’s a small world in the fiery city of Dresden as the main characters keep bumping into each other.  The cast keeps a straight face through all this, although the wooden performance by Sadler makes one wonder if he can emote.  The rest of the cast is fine, especially Felicitas Woll.  The effects are surprisingly decent.  I was dreading the bombardment, but it is actually appropriately horrific.  The sets are excellent and the dead bodies piled in them pack an emotional punch.  I could put up with the credulity challenging love story better since it was dropped into the historical inferno that was Dresden.

                 As far as accuracy, the movie does not intend to be a documentary, but it does weigh in on the controversy about the bombing.  Before the bombing raid, bomber crews are briefed that Dresden is of “the highest value to the German defenses”.  It has a Gestapo headquarters, a munitions factory, poison gas facility, and is full of German troops headed to the Eastern Front.  The RAF will show the Russians how it’s done.  “Bomb the city until it burns”.  This pretty much conforms to the official line of why the raids occurred.  However, the bombing has been debated by historians ever since.  Dresden was a virgin city that “Bomber Harris” and Winston Churchill decided to target in the period after the Battle of the Bulge and as the Soviet offensive neared Germany.  There is evidence that Churchill wanted to aid the Soviet offensive and Harris saw Dresden as part of Bomber Command’s efforts to reduce German civilian morale.  The city was bombed from February 13-15, 1945 by over 1,000 British and American bombers.  Although the British have taken the brunt of the “terror bombing” accusations, the American bombers carried 40% incendiaries, which was a much higher rate than normal.  The resulting fire storm was Hiroshimaesque.  There is no way the movie could recreate the horror of what man can do to man.  1,600 acres were burned out and around 25,000 civilians were killed.  (Some studies place the number of dead at much higher.)  Although the movie is not intending to make a political statement about the “atrocity”, it is hard to watch the attractive cast go through it without thinking “Bomber” Harris is probably in Hell.

                Whether you watch “Dresden” should depend on how guilty you will feel about laughing at the ridiculous plot developments in the midst of so much inhumanity and suffering.  It is a standard romance set in a terrible historical event.  You won’t learn anything about love, but you will learn something about the most famous non-atomic bombing of WWII.

GRADE  =  C