Ebooks

Charriere, Henri

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• Rate this torrent +  |  -

Torrent info

Torrent Files List

Torrent description

Henri \"Papillon\" Charrière (Steve McQueen), a safecracker, is unjustly convicted of murder (specifically, murdering a pimp) in 1930s France. He is sentenced to life imprisonment in the notorious French penal colony on Devil\'s Island, off the coast of French Guiana. En route he meets a fellow convict, Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman), a forger and embezzler who is convinced that his wife will secure his release. Dega hires Papillon as his bodyguard, but the two eventually develop a friendship.

After defending Dega against a sadistic guard, Papillon is sentenced to solitary confinement. In gratitude, Dega smuggles extra food to Papillon. When the food smuggling is discovered, prison guards cut Papillon\'s food rations in half, believing that hunger will force him to reveal the name of his benefactor. Though emaciated and half-insane, and reduced to eating insects to survive, Papillon refuses to snitch on Dega. After two years he is released from solitary confinement, having spent six months in total darkness and on half rations. After being reunited, he and Dega plan to escape.

While recovering in the infirmary, Papillon meets a homosexual orderly named André Maturette (Robert Deman), who insists on joining their escape plot. The prisoners bribe a guard who promises to give them a boat, but Dega breaks his ankle during the escape. After paying the guard and tramping into the jungle, they discover that the boat is unseaworthy. A local trapper, who reveals that the guard has repeatedly cheated prisoners by taking their money and then arranging to have them captured by bounty hunters, kills the waiting bounty hunters. He refers Papillon to a nearby leper colony, where they obtain supplies and a boat.

After reaching the mainland, the trio are accosted by a group of soldiers. The soldiers open fire. Maturette is shot and captured along with Dega, still crippled by his broken ankle. After evading the soldiers, Papillon lives for a long period with a native tribe; one day he awakes to find they have moved on. At a police checkpoint, Papillon pays a nun to join her entourage and goes with her to a convent. Admitting he is a fugitive but stressing that he is not a murderer, Papillon asks the Mother Superior for refuge. She turns him over to the authorities.

As punishment for his escape, Papillon is forced to spend five years in solitary confinement. He has gray hair when released and sees Maturette, who is dying. Papillon is moved to the remote Devil\'s Island, where he reunites with Dega. From a high cliff, Papillon observes that every seventh wave that comes into a small harbor rebounds from the rocks and is powerful enough to carry him out to sea. Manufacturing two floats, he tries, unsuccessfully, to persuade Dega to come with him. After embracing Dega, Papillon leaps from the cliff and, grasping his float, is carried into the sea.

A narrator states that Papillon lived the rest of his life in freedom. He outlived the prison, which was closed in 1953. The prison is shown abandoned and overgrown by jungle plants

related torrents

comments (0)