A French convict in the 1930s befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence in the South American penal colony on Devil's Island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.


Books with substantial mentioning of Papillon

James Robert Parish
Prison Pictures from Hollywood, Plots, Critiques, Casts and Credits for 293 Theatrical and Made-for-Television Releases
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London, 1991

Articles on Papillon

Scott A. Barnard, The Isolated Hero: Papillon (1973), Cast Away (2000), and the Myth of Philoctetes, in: Monica S. Cyrino and Meredith E. Safran (eds.), Classical myth on screen, New York, 2015

Articles with substantial mentioning of Papillon

Simon Braund, The Top 10 Prison Breaks, in: Empire, nr. 210 (December), 2006 pp. 184-185