Despite being bold,
provocative, and smart, Patton should
not have curried favor during its original release, since the movie arrived at
the height of America’s misguided war in Vietnam. Surely, there couldn’t have
been a worse time to release a feature-length tribute to one of World War II’s
most famous American generals. Yet Patton
is much more complicated than any hagiography, and the movie’s greatest
strengths are undeniable. The script is insightful and witty, the direction and
production values are impressive, and leading man George C. Scott’s performance
ranks among the highest achievements in screen acting. The movie is imperfect,
of course, suffering such flaws as an excessively long running time, but the
audacity with which the filmmakers engage themes of hubris, militarism, and
patriotism are still startling 40 years after the movie was made.
Notwithstanding
a riveting prologue (more on that in a minute), the movie begins in North
Africa, when General George S. Patton Jr. (Scott) is first recruited to battle
Germany’s “Desert Fox,” tank-division commander Erwin Rommel (Karl Michael Volger).
As the movie progresses, Patton is moved from Africa to the European theater,
his battlefield victories overshadowed by his outrageous behavior. Gaudy and
vainglorious, Patton openly cites his belief in reincarnation, describing himself as the latest form of a soldier who has existed during the great wars of
previous centuries; although Patton bolsters his claims with brilliant
strategizing, his otherworldly pomposity spooks subordinates and unsettles
superiors.
Worse, Patton behaves abominably when confronted with GIs he regards
as cowards or shirkers. In one of the picture’s unforgettable moments, Patton loses
his cool upon meeting an enlisted man hospitalized for shell-shock, a condition
whose existence Patton denies—Patton violently slaps the GI and seems ready to
shoot the young man until Patton is subdued by aides. Thanks to such
transgressions, Patton never consistently occupies the forefront of the Allied
command, so the movie tracks his humiliating slide from active duty to elder-statesmen
status.
Although Patton has a large
cast of characters and a sprawling number of locations, it’s not precisely a
war epic—rather, it’s an intimate character study that plays across a massive
stage during wartime. So, while costar Karl Malden is a steady presence as
Patton’s staunchest Army ally, General Omar Bradley, other actors in the movie
serve as mirrors reflecting facets of Scott’s performance. Scott justifies this
approach with a thunderous star turn. His Patton is funny, inspiring,
intimidating, maddening, pathetic, strange, and a dozen other things, whether
he’s melodically quoting ancient poetry or impotently shooting a pistol at a
fighter plane during a strafing run.
Director Franklin J. Schaffner does a
remarkable job of keeping the story forceful and clear, often through the use
of elegantly gliding camerawork; screenwriters Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund
H. North provide brilliant dialogue and evocative vignettes; and composer Jerry
Goldsmith’s clever score uses echoed horn figures to accentuate the idea of
Patton as a figure from myth let loose on the modern world.
Yet the film’s most
indelible moment is also its simplest, the mesmerizing two-minute monologue that
starts the movie with shocking directness. Stepping in front of a gigantic
American flag, an ornately uniformed Patton barks out a hard-driving, vulgar
speech about American can-do spirit, featuring a line that epitomizes the
character’s philosophy: “No bastard every won a war by dying for his country—he
won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” FYI, Scott
returned to his Oscar-winning role years later for an underwhelming TV
miniseries, The Last Days of Patton
(1986), though few consider that project a true sequel to the 1970 movie.
Patton:
RIGHT ON
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