Word: papillon
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...stay home in front of the TV, but over vacation and in the past week more people were going to movies than at any time in years. The Exorcist had all the news-show publicity, but is hasn't been seen by many more people than the popular Papillon and Serpico. These three are making the money-men of the film industry to wild. And they were only a small part of the holiday film explosion...
...auspicious year, was not the ugliness of the world, but people's powerlessness in its face. There was an ongoing sense that the scene has gone out of control. If the world's not doomed (Mean Streets), it's irrational (Don't Look Now); if it's not confined (Papillon, American Graffiti), it's corrupt, inconvertibly so (Serpico, Day of the Dolphin, Paper Moon, etc). And--most apparent in this year of sidekicks and Kung Fu, women in the movies are less in evidence than ever...
Some-like Henry Charriere (Steve McQueen), whose nickname, Papillon (Butterfly), is symbolized in a tattoo on his chest-are endlessly obsessed with plans for escape. Others, like Louis Degas (Dustin Hoffman), try to get along by going along. Still others are on hand to demonstrate by their dramatically timely deaths just how difficult both courses are. Much suspenseful, if highly stylized, drama results from the interaction of these characters with one another and with hell on earth. Devotees of the prison-and-escape genre will enjoy anew such tradition-blessed ploys as the smug-gled-weapon bit, sundry chases through...
Unfortunately, Director Schaffner's natural taste is for the big, expensive canvas. The slickness of his work vitiates any attempt to take Papillon with entire seriousness. Prison life is more picturesque than genuinely horrifying, and the escapes into the world outside are seen through a National Geographic lens brightly. Everywhere squalor seems to have been painted on carefully but obviously, like McQueen's old man's makeup at the end of the picture...
Still, McQueen works hard and al most manages to triumph over his star presence, while Hoffman submerges himself eccentrically and amusingly in his coward's role. Papillon inevitably refers us to old movies rather than to reality. Audiences whose expectations do not exceed their grasp will find it a much more comfortable vehicle for escape than any that McQueen & Co. discover on location...