Papillon
Short description
Papillon is a crime drama about Henri Charrière, a safecracker known as "Papillon" for the butterfly tattooed on his chest. Convicted of a murder he insists he did not commit, he is sentenced to life and shipped to the penal colonies of French Guiana in the 1930s. On the voyage he meets Louis Dega, a convicted forger, and offers the physically fragile man protection in return for the money he needs to fund an escape. Their friendship forms the core of the story as Papillon pursues a way out of a system built to hold him permanently, and his repeated attempts bring ever harsher punishment, including transfer to Devil's Island, a place from which no one is said to have escaped.
The film was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and written by Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr. It followed Patton and Nicholas and Alexandra in Schaffner's run of films, and was produced by Schaffner with Robert Dorfmann. Steve McQueen plays Charrière and Dustin Hoffman plays Dega, with supporting turns from Victor Jory, Don Gordon, Anthony Zerbe and Robert Deman among a credited cast of thirty.
Released in December 1973, the film ran 151 minutes and was made for about 12 million dollars, returning roughly 53 million worldwide. It holds an 8 out of 10 rating on IMDb from 145,000 votes and 7.8 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller base of 2,189 votes, while critics rated it 7.7 out of 10 across 33 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the novel, Louis Degas is a minor character, remaining outside the plot already in the first half of the book. In the film, however, Degas became one of the main characters.
- When creating the image of Louis Degas, Dustin Hoffman was inspired by the image of the film's co-writer, Dalton Trumbo. This particularly applies to the aloofness and shyness that struck Hoffman during their personal acquaintance.
- To be able to see through the thick lenses of his character's glasses, Dustin Hoffman had to wear special contact lenses.
- It is documented that Henri Charrière was imprisoned in Saint-Laurent prison and may have escaped from there, however, he was never incarcerated on the infamous Devil's Island, although a penal colony on that island did indeed exist.
- Both the book and the film depict the shores of Devil's Island as solid, high cliffs. In reality, the shores of Devil's Island (now known as Salvation Island) are indeed rocky, but gently sloping.
- When Motholek is first placed in solitary confinement, he is bitten by a vampire bat. The wound it leaves looks like two small holes from which blood oozes – exactly as depicted in vampire movies. Vampire bats, although they drink blood, operate differently. Flying up to a sleeping living creature, a vampire bat does not bite its victim with fangs, which bats do not have, but instead cuts off a small piece of skin with sharp incisors, after which it deepens the wound with a rough tongue. After that, the bats hover over the victim, lapping up the drops of blood that seep from the wound.
- In the final shots, as Henri Charrière swims on a sack of coconuts, a diver in blue shorts and fins can be seen through the water, holding the sack underwater.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
