Papillon(1973)

Tweet

Toward the end of this month TCM will show the movie Papillon. I am recording it. Such a good movie. A remake was made in 2018. I haven't seen it but I doubt it could be as good as the original released in 1973. Steve McQueen never looked so bad(until his last days of cancer I would suspect)as he did in his portrayal of Henri Charriere. Dustin Hoffin is at his best as Louis Dega. In France in 1933 Henri was wrongly convicted of murder and sent to the jungle labor camp in French Guiana. He meets Louis and the two become friends. Louis is a embezzler and forger who thinks his wife will at some point secure his release. The movie is based on the 1969 autobiography by Henri Charriere. Soon after the release of the book began a bidding war for the rights to the story. It took $500,000 for Continental Distributing to win the rights. Filming was done in such locals as Jamaica, Spain, Montego Bay,and Maui Hawaii where the last cliff jumping scene was filmed. Steve McQueen did the jump himself and said it was one of the exhilerating experiences of his life. Henri Charriere was a consultant on location and he let the film makers know of a lot of what he experienced in his years of confinement in the region on the northern coast of South America. This is a marvelous film about the hardships and degragation these two faced in this mud bog of labor camp. The feeling is that of dispair and very little hope. But Henri's goal is to escape and the movie carries you along his journey. It is two and a half hours and well worth the screening. Steve Mcqueen won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actor in a Drama and was nominated for an Oscar. Picture courtesy of Google. Here is more on the plot if you are interested: