Unstuck Watch: Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

Watched:  06/16/2026

Format:  TCM - first ever showing on the network

Viewing:  First

Director:  George Roy Hill

It's been many years since I read Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade: a Duty Dance with Death. So long ago that all I can say for certain is that it was post-2000 and probably before this blog was founded.  I was just old enough reading it to know my WWII history and a bit embarrassed I'd not read it earlier in life.

But Vonnegut is, hopefully, something that works for you no matter your age.

As it's been a while since I read the book, I won't spend energy comparing and contrasting.  Instead, I'll just suggest watching the movie sometime if you've already read the novel.  If jumping straight to the movie, it also can't hurt to pre-load your knowledge of the last year of World War II in Europe, to get what audiences in 1972 would have likely known just through cultural osmosis.  Things like "oh... Dresden" may not mean as much to some folks here in 2026 and all that you would know is coming.

I won't get into whether what Billy experiences is real or not.  Y'all can make your own decisions and I don't think the answer is that easy.

A movie alternately a bit of sci-fi, a World War II anti-war picture, and a look at the effect of trauma and when one is asked to return live in normalcy after war ends, there's only implied sign posts along the way as to what may or may not be happening.   George Roy Hill's crafting of the story is really pretty remarkable given the "time-tripping" that *should* feel disjointed, and maybe did in 1972, now feels incredibly prescient for how stories are told in our modern era.  We think nothing of non-linear storytelling.  Heck, we don't mind multi-versal 4D storytelling.  

In Michael Sacks, they found the blank face that does feel a lot like the Billy Pilgrim of the book - a naive Midwesterner who arrives late to the war and is basically accidentally dropped into the thick of the worst of it with the Battle of the Bulge and winding up as a POW in German hands. His life once he's home again - empty despite the success.  And then his experience with aliens (this is sci-fi, after all).

I also want to give a bit of credit to the late Valerie Perrine, who is really good in this, and I wish I'd seen it while she was still with us.

What's most surprising is that this movie is not taught for editing.  As far as I know, anyway.  How the actual @#$% this all cut together into a coherent narrative back in the day?  Credit Dede Allen who is behind some of your favorite movies, from The Hustler to The Addams Family.  She was doing this with snippets of film on a Steenbeck, not cutting on a computer - and she still pulled all of this together - each scene commenting upon the one before and what is coming next - just in different times and places.

Oh, and the score is by Glenn Gould.  Go figure.

So, yes, an adaptation of one of the great American novels, adapted by a top-flight director, edited by an ace editor... and you have pretty good stuff.  I'm not shocked.  But I am also glad it had been a bit since I read the novel so I could just take in the movie without running comparisons the whole time.