100 BEST WAR MOVIES #33. Patton (1970)

 

        “Patton” was based on the books Patton:  Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago and A Soldier’s Story by Omar Bradley (who served as a technical adviser).  The screenwriters were Francis Ford Coppola and Edward North (who shared the Academy Award, but had never met before the ceremony).  Coppola wrote the first draft, but was fired partly because the studio did not like the opening speech!  The speech was a composite of remarks Patton made at various times.  The use of words like "bastard", "shit", "sons of bitches", and "Hell" were groundbreaking for a major feature.  Rod Steiger, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, and Burt Lancaster turned down the role and the studio nixed John Wayne.  George C. Scott was reluctant to take the role because he disliked Patton.  He was upset about the positioning of the speech at the beginning feeling it was too powerful and the rest of the film would be a letdown.  The movie was shot in Spain to take advantage of all its circa WWII equipment.  The movie was a huge success and the Patton family loved it.  It won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director (Franklin J. Schaffner), Actor,  Original Screenplay, Editing, Sound, and Art Direction.   It was nominated for Cinematography, Visual Effects, and Score.  It is ranked #89 on AFI’s list of greatest movies and Patton is #29 on the list of heroes.

        The movie opens with the iconic speech.  Patton stands before a huge American flag in full regalia and addresses the audience.  He uses language many viewers had never heard in a movie before.  The speech has many memorable lines including “We are not only going to shoot the bastards , we are going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.”  Another gem was: “Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”  Hell, virtually every line is dynamic.

        The body of the film opens with the aftermath of the Battle of Kasserine Pass. After the disaster, Patton is given command of the undisciplined and dispirited II Corps.  He arrives with sirens blaring and proceeds to crack the whip. This establishes him as a martinet, but the unit needed it. One of the movies themes is Patton’s adversarial relations with both the American high command and British generals, especially Montgomery (Michael Bates).  The quest for glory is another recurring theme. The movie may be ambiguous about Patton’s personality, but it absolutely idolizes his military genius.  It creates a fictional German staff officer named Steiger to give Patton’s background and to give insight into the German high command’s respect for him. 

        The first combat set piece is the Battle of El Qatar.  Patton lays an ambush for the Afrika Korps.  It is grand scale and very noisy, but not exactly suspenseful.  It also lacks realism and is marred by surprisingly old schoolish deaths.  The deaths are the silly twirling, touchdown-signaling variety.  The campaigning shifts to Sicily and the Monty dueling begins.  Monty is portrayed as an insufferably pompous general as opposed to our sufferably pompous Patton.  Plus Monty has the slows.  Patton goes full megalomaniac on Sicily as he becomes obsessed with beating the Brits to Messina.  Although bereft of combat in the movie, the race is very entertaining and crucial to the character development arc. Unfortunately, the destructive nature of his personality comes through when he slaps a shell-shocked soldier in a military hospital.  This incident has a huge effect on Patton’s career and almost ends it.

After time in the doghouse, he is given command of the Third Army in France, Patton is now under the command of the skeptical Bradley.  The relationship between the two men is a core focus of the movie. Patton leads the breakout from the Normandy beachhead in a dazzling show of aggressive maneuvering that mirrors his personality. The movie builds to the Battle of the Bulge.  A battle that movie audiences would have been familiar with from movies like “Battleground” and “Battle of the Bulge”, but probably not familiar with Patton’s role in it.  The film suspensefully depicts Patton’s tour de force of turning his army to strike the German flank and relief Bastogne (naturally there has to be a reference to “Nuts!”).  After the triumph in the Ardennes, the film jumps to the end of the war in Europe.

ACTING:   A                 

ACTION:   C  (6/10)

ACCURACY:  A-          

PLOT:  A                       

REALISM:   A            

CINEMATOGRAPHY:    A

SCORE:   A               

SCENE:  the speech

QUOTE:   Reporter: Do you actually read the Bible?  Patton:  Every damned day.

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:

        The use of two acclaimed books makes “Patton” above average in historical accuracy.  Plus the hands-on participation of Omar Bradley is a huge plus (although it reflects his point of view in their relationship and perpetuates the myth that he was a good general).  In spite of this there are some Hollywood moments to enhance the plot.  The most important point is that the movie gets Patton’s personality down pat.  He was the multi-layered person that Scott portrays.  He could be profane, sensitive, religious, glory-hungry, charismatic, insufferable, etc. Physically Scott looks like Patton, but Patton had a high voice which obviously would not have worked in the film.  You can’t blame Hollywood for that.

        The screenwriters decided to play around a bit with the Patton – Bradley relationship, but Bradley apparently had no problems with this.  In the movie, Bradley is basically portrayed as shaking his head at Patton’s antics when he is subordinate to Patton and then keeping him on a short leash after their role reversal.  They are depicted as respectful arch-friends.  In actuality, Bradley disliked Patton mostly because of his over the top personality.  Patton’s profanities rattled the moralistic Bradley.

        The movie makes the conscious decision to leave out some significant events in Patton’s career because they would have tampered with the plot themes.  The campaign in Lorraine was a tough slog that would have disrupted the flow and did not have the exhilaration of the Battle of the Bulge segment.  Patton’s disastrous Hammelburg Raid to rescue his son- in-law from a POW camp would have lessened the portrayal of the military genius.  His visits to concentration camps would have suddenly introduced the Holocaust towards the end of the film.

CRITIQUE:

        “Patton” is a significant movie in the canon of war films.  It had a major impact on the development of the VioLingo School (as I call modern as opposed to Old School war movies).  Although it does not push the boundaries of combat violence, it is certainly more realistic in soldier language than Old School movies.  In fact, the opening speech with its profanities was considered to be shocking to an audience weaned on movies like “The Desert Fox”.  1970 was a watershed year with other genre-changing films like "MASH" and "Kelly’s Heroes".  “Patton” was the one that scored 8 Academy Awards and brought tremendous prestige to the genre.  It combined the hero and anti-hero in one person and thus acted as a bridge between Old School heroes and the modern anti-heroes.

        The movie has only one weakness.  Although some laud its combat scenes, they are actually pretty lame and brief.  Since this is a biopic, combat depiction is not crucial.  However, given the big budget nature of the film, the action should have been better.  It is particularly distressing to see the silly deaths that are associated with inferior films.

        The acting makes up for the lack of combat fireworks.  In a sense, Patton supplies the fireworks himself.  Scott’s performance is magnificent.  Only Peter O’Toole’s performance in “Lawrence of Arabia” is comparable.  Scott was one of the most deserving Best Actor winners ever which is ironic because he refused to accept the Oscar.  He totally dominates the movie from opening speech to ending line. (“All glory is fleeting”.)  Karl Malden is very good as Bradley.  Michael Bates does such a wonderful parody of Montgomery that his portrayal has become fixed in the American perception of him.  The rest of the cast is fine.

        The movie is technically sound.  The score by Jerry Goldsmith is very memorable.  Surprisingly, there is only 32 minutes of music in the film.  The sound effects are also well done.  The battles may not be that exhilarating, but they sound amazing.  The cinematography is top notch.  The scenery is nice, but it’s the interiors that are remarkable. They are expansive and baroque, like Patton.  The decisions by the director to subtitle the Germans and use newsreels copiously as background to the war’s events were wise.

        The screenplay is almost perfect for a biography and character study.  Coppola/North did their home work and managed to include Patton’s greatest hits with the exception of incidents like the Hammelburg Raid that just did not fit the narrative.  They earned the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.  The movie could have been either idolizing  or scornful given the subject.  The screenplay skirts the extremes so well that some people criticize the film as hero-worshipping and others insist it besmirches a great American.  The themes are well-developed.  One is that Patton was a man out of his time.  Another is that it is possible to love war and treat it is as a profession.  Patton would not have agreed with Sherman’s “war is Hell”.  A minor subtheme is that Patton was religious (he read the Bible “every God damned day”) and yet reveled in the killing of Germans.

CONCLUSION:

        “Patton” was the perfect movie for its time.  1970 was ripe for a movie that changed the game.  “Patton” reinvigorated the war film because it brought in huge audiences and opened people’s minds to a more realistic depiction of warfare and command in warfare.  The movie cannily tapped in to the country’s Vietnam War psyche.  The hawks saw Patton as the kind of general we needed to win a just cause.  Doves could sneer at the type of mentality that had gotten us into the mess.  You saw what you wanted to see.  Even today it is unclear whether Patton should be seen as a role model.