Plot
Henri "Papillon" Charrière (Steve McQueen), a petty criminal, 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 with the expectation 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 and is released from solitary confinement after two years, including six months in total darkness and on half rations. Reunited with Dega, they soon begin planning their escape.
While recovering in the infirmary, Papillon meets a homosexual orderly named André Maturette (Robert Deman) who insists on joining their escape plot to avoid sexual assault by a lecherous guard. 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 is disgusted that the guard has repeatedly cheated prisoners after taking their cash, kills the guard and 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 and Dega, still crippled by his broken ankle, urges Papillon and Maturette to flee. After evading the soldiers, Papillon lives for a long period with a native tribe before attempting to reenter society. At a police checkpoint, Papillon pays a nun to join her entourage and goes with her to a convent. Admitting he is an escapee but stressing that he is not a murderer, Papillon asks the Mother Superior for refuge, but she turns him over to the authorities.
As punishment for his escape Papillon spends five years in solitary confinement and, now gray-haired, is released just in time to see a dying Maturette. While Papillon still yearns for freedom and is imprisoned on the remote Devil's Island, his friend Dega's spirit has been broken, in part because he's learned his wife has divorced him and married his defense attorney.
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, and outlived the prison. The prison is shown abandoned and overgrown by jungle plants.
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