O Golpe de Papillon

There's a point where PAPILLON author Henri Charrière has a long passionate kiss with Italian bombshell Claudia Cardinale when you know exactly why he wrote POPSY POP aka THE BUTTERFLY AFFAIR aka THE 21 CARAT SNATCH, and why he cast himself in the part of a really old rogue being kissed by this semi-young, gorgeous cult starlet...

He gets screwed as well, as in screwed-over by Cardinale as POPSY POP, who saunters into an extremely poor diamond-mining village in Venezuela: A uniquely ragged, dilapidated third-world location that's far more interesting than a rushed heist plot involving a helicopter vanishing with the diamonds and the girl...

Who had also befriended British import Stanley Baker as a cop named Silva, so he's supposedly a local and on the side of the otherwise violent, torturing miners/revolutionaries, who make bandits in Spaghetti Westerns -- which this resembles a cheaper jungle-set version of -- seem wimpy by comparison...

But we're not here very long, cutting to the chase with Baker and Charrière traveling through more lush, tropical towns to find the girl, who connects with an annoying (and distracting) politician in what's ultimately more a visualized script treatment (liken to Charrière's obscure PAPILLON sequel BANCO) than a realized heist flick.

The fact that Henri Charriere, whose life was dramatized in "Papillon" with Steve McQueen in 1973, wrote the script for this caper film and also has a supporting role in it may make some people willing to check it out, mostly out of curiosity. But don't be fooled; it's an (initially) muddled, padded and unexpectedly unslick picture. Not even Claudia Cardinale in a low-cut dress can make it worth watching. (*1/2)

The fact that Henri Charriere wrote this script and acted in the film is the only reason it hasn't slipped into oblivion long ago. For anyone who has read his autobiographies, "Papillon" and "Banco", seeing Henri Charriere in the flesh is the main reason to seek this movie out. The very fact that he went from escaping Devil's Island and then reinventing his life through some death-defying adventures, all the way up to a film-actor, is a feat to be admired.

But this film is really shaky in almost every way. The story was written probably from his own experiences, dealing with diamond thieves in the South American jungles. It's really pretty standard fare, storywise, dealing basically with the theme of honor amongst thieves.

Papillon/Charriere is one of several burglars who stage a daring theft from the steaming jungles, only to experience betrayal from one of their own. They pursue their betrayers and are themselves pursued. But the film maintains an unexpectedly slow pace for this type of movie, despite being basically a "chase story". You almost get the feeling that all of the actors are waiting nervously for Charriere to do something throughout the film, but he spends a lot of time sitting and thinking and smoking before answering questions, in a heavily-accented English.

Charriere seems to have gotten a bit too comfortable by the time he made this film, looking a bit too portly to be taken seriously as a swashbuckling, fist-fighting burglar. The film also contains the typical countercultural themes of the time involving fear of aging, which was perhaps a bit of a marketing ploy to the audiences of the time. It seems a bit out of place in the overall story.

Read Henri Charriere's two autobiographies first, then perhaps watch the Steve McQueen film-version of the first book, which was released only a few months before Charriere died . Only then will you maybe acquire the curiosity to see the man behind the amazing books. Otherwise you may fall asleep before the film is over.

Claudia is beautiful as always but the movie is not one of her best, in fact, it's one not really good, even mediocre. The presence of Henri Charrière, who is also the author of the script, does not ennoble anything, but on the contrary, it is a boring presence. Stanley Baker, a very good actor, beautiful man, does not have a role for his talent. Two stars for the presence of Claudia and two stars for the presence of Stanley Baker, four stars in total.

So one rainy day in the early 1990's I was sitting at home flipping through the local TV stations looking for something to watch when I momentarily caught a glimpse of someone who looked familiar. I stopped changing channels for a moment to see if I could figure out why this old guy looked familiar, when it hit me-- that's Henri Charriere, the author of Papillon! He was in a movie? This would have been in the Dark Ages, before the advent of Google or IMDb, so I did what anyone would do back in the day... I called the TV station to ask what the name of the movie was that they were showing at the moment. And it was this film.

Despite the presence of Claudia Cardinale, a well-known (and highly paid) actress (at least in Europe), it only took a few minutes of viewing to see that the film was, well, kinda shite. Poor production values (especially the sound editing, which may have been at least partly caused by overdubs, as the cast seems to have been from all over (Italy, France, Spain, UK). And Charriere is awful; his English is all but incomprehensible, and his acting is a flat as the surface of a CD. The story might have been interesting if the dialogue had been written better, and the director and crew more talented. As is, it's only real value is seeing Charriere on film, as he died shortly before the release of the Steve McQueen/Dustin Hoffman film Papillion, based on his memoir.