Papillon
1973
**½
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Cast: Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman, Victor Jory, Don Gordon, Anthony Zerbe, Robert Deman, Woodrow Parfrey, Bill Mumy, George Coulouris, Val Avery, Gregory Sierra
In the 1930s, Papillon, a safecracker wrongly convicted of murder, is sentenced to life imprisonment in the notorious French Guiana penal system. He forms a friendship with Louis Dega, a counterfeiter who relies on Papillon’s protection. This long and arduous prison drama is adapted from the autobiographical 1969 novel by Henri Charrière, which may or may not be based on his own experiences. The film paints a believably harrowing picture of the brutal conditions in the prison system, but there’s very little plot or character development to engage with. Papillon drifts from one situation to the next for 150 minutes, and then it simly ends. We learn virtually nothing about him as a person, apart from his determination to regain his freedom.
