The greatest adventure of escape ever filmed!

For Papillon survival was not enough .... he had to be free

Two men with nothing in common but a will to live and a place to die

The autobiography of Henri Charriere, one of the few people to successfully escape from the notorious French penal colony of Devil's Island, served as the basis for Papillon. Steve McQueen plays the pugnacious Charriere (known as "Papillon," or "butterfly," because of a prominent tatoo), incarcerated--wrongly, he claims--for murdering a pimp. He saves the life of fellow convict Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman), a counterfeiter who will later show his gratitude by helping Charriere in his many escape attempts, and by smuggling food to Charriere when the latter is put in solitary confinement. One breakout, which takes Charriere and Dega to a leper colony and then to a native encampment, is almost successful, but Charriere is betrayed (allegedly because he stopped for an act of kindness) and back the prisoners go to French Guiana. Years later, Dega is made a trustee and is content with his lot, but the ageing, white-haired Charriere cannot be held back. A tribute to the unquenchability of the human spirit, Papillon brought in an impressive $22 million at the box office.


Papillon is a 1973 prison film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, based on the best-selling autobiography by the French convict Henri Charrière.
The film starred Steve McQueen as Henri Charrière ("Papillon"), and Dustin Hoffman as Louis Dega. Due to remote locations, the film was quite expensive for the time ($12 million), but readily earned more than twice that in the first year of public distribution.[3] The film's title is French, and means "Butterfly" in English, referring to the tattoo and nickname that Charrière was given.


Papillon is now often regarded as a classic. Several critics suggest the film is McQueen's best performance. In contrast, Roger Ebert's review upon the film's original release was only two-out-of-four stars, stating that the main flaw was a failure to make the audience interested in McQueen and Hoffman's characters: "You know something has gone wrong when you want the hero to escape simply so that the movie can be over.


Release Date: December 16, 1973

Distrib: Allied Artists

Boxoffice: $53,267,000 2013: $242,259,500