Arrangement of story


I've read the book but not seen the movie. Is the film presented as Billy Pilgrim actually being unstuck in time, ie: hopping randomly from scene to scene in his life? Or is this referred to but the story is told chronologically? It's just that anything other that a chronological story telling would have been a cinematic breakthrough for 1972. The earliest such movie I know of is Brazil, told in reverse, which was released in 1980 or so. Or am I thinking of something else? Meh.

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The movie was done like the book, not chronological. As I watched it I was thinking the same thing, that this must've been a new concept in film at the time. (Is that a redudant sentence?)

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Scene 1: 5 year old Billy thrown in the pool by his father at YMCA (1927)
Scene 2: Billy drifts through the snow and captured by Paul Lazzaro and
roland Weary. Then they're captured by Germans (December 1944)
Scene 3: Billy and other POW's marching to boxcar to go to POW camp
Scene 4: Paul Lazzaro promises to avernge Weary's death on boxcar
Scene 5: They arrive at POW camp to inprocess
Scene 6: POW's greeted by British POW's and fed a meal
Scene 7: Billy's passed out in a room and acquaints with Edgar Derby
Scene 8: It's announced they're going to Dresden, Derby elected leader
Scene 9: POW's on train to Dresden
Scene 10: POW's march to their new home throughout downtown Dresden
Scene 11: Introduced to Schlachthoffunf, their new home
Scene 12: Bits and pieces of their time as laborers
Scene 13: February 13, 1945 in Dresden
Scene 14: They have dinner and are introduced to traitor Howard Campbell.
Dresden is bombed
Scene 15: POW's survey the damage
Scene 16: Bodies are being retrieved for burning
Scene 17: Edgar Derby shot by firing squad
Scene 18: Billy, Lazzaro, and others find the war over for them (April 1945)
Scene 19: Billy's mother visiting him at VA hospital (Spring 1946)
Scene 20: Billy and Valencia on their wedding night (Summer 1946)
Scene 21: Billy goes through change of seasons playing with his dog (1947)
Scene 22: Billy elected Lions Club president (1957)
Scene 23: Billy gives wife a diamond ring for anniversary and catches his son
Robert masturbating in bathroom (1963)
Scene 24: Billy and family at drive in movie (1963)
Scene 25: Billy's son Robert caught vandalizing Catholic cemetery (1965)
Scene 26: Billy gives Valencia a new Cadillac for her birthday (1966)
Scene 27: Billy, his father in law, and other optometrists fly to a convention
in Montreal. The plane crashes in Vermont (February 1968)
Scene 28: Billy's wife frantically drives to come see him and destroys her car
and other cars in the process
Scene 29: Billy is operated on
Scene 30: Billy's daughter Barbara and her husband Stanley find out he's okay,
but her mother died of carbon monoxide poisoning
Secne 31: Billy is recovering and sharing a room with a gruff college professor
Scene 32: Billy's daughter Barbara drives him home (March 1968)
Scene 33: Billy's son Robert home from leave in the Army to visit him
Scene 34: Billy kidnapped by Tralfamadorians
Scene 35: Porn star Montana Wildhack kidnapped and introduced to Billy
Scene 36: Montana inquires about Billy's time tripping
Scene 37: Montana tries on her new blouse and they discuss having a baby
Scene 38: Barbara and her husband Stanley come to the house frantically
searching for Billy. He is typing a letter in the basement of his
house to the Ilium news
Scene 39: Billy, Barbara, and Stanley are in the dining room and he discusses
Tralfamadore with them
Scene 40: Billy and Montana have a baby together (January 1969)
Scene 41: Billy is an elderly man in Philadelphia giving a speech about
Tralfamadore and shot to death by Lazzaro (early 2000's)

THE END

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Just watch the film.

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Citizen Kane was partly so famous because it wasn't told chronologically. I'd say that was the starting point.

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