PATTON (1970)
DIRECTOR: Franklin J. Schaffner
CAST: George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Michael Bates, Ed Binns, Karl Michael Vogler, Siegfried Rauch, Richard Münch, Paul Stevens, Tim Considine, Clint Ritchie
REVIEW: Equally effective as a war film or a character study, Patton still holds up today chiefly due to the brilliant lead performance by the late, great George C. Scott. Rod Steiger, Lee Marvin, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and Burt Lancaster were all offered the title role, but after watching this film it is impossible to imagine anyone else but Scott. Patton can be enjoyed simply as one of the great film performances of all time. Scott does not simply play Patton, he is Patton. Credit is also due the capable direction by Franklin J. Schaffner, producer Frank McCarthy (a retired brigadier general who had worked for twenty years to make a movie about Patton), the intelligent, even-handed screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, and the cinematogrophy by Fred Kroenkamp, who enhances the film with his sweeping shots of Tunisia, France, and Germany. John Huston, Henry Hathaway, and Fred Zinnemann had declined to direct. William Wyler agreed but later left over script disagreements with Scott. Nearly half of the film's budget was spent on soldiers and equipment borrowed from the Spanish Army, and its limitations sometimes become apparent, as when "German" tanks are really painted-over Shermans, and the same two German planes fly around the whole movie.
The film starts with the famous Patton speech, made up mostly of actual Patton quotes, albeit spliced together out of numerous speeches. This legendary opening was orginally intended for the end of the movie. When Scott first appears onscreen against the backdrop of a huge American flag, glittering with medals, and proceeds to give an unapologetically warhungry speech, he basically establishes his character right then and there. After that, we go to Kasserine Pass, Tunisia, 1943, where American corpses and ruined tanks lay in the hot desert sun. General Omar Bradley (Karl Malden) decides the American Army needs the best battlefield commander it has against the vaunted German Afrika Korps. Hence Patton's entrance onto the stage. Early scenes establish his strict disciplinary sense as well as a certain gruff rapport with the troops, and his belief in reincarnation, revealed when he and Bradley visit the ancient ruins of Carthage and Patton "remembers" his experiences during its fall. Patton was certainly one of the most colorful characters of the war; he believed he had been reincarnated in many famous battles, he carried a Bible with him in battle, and was regularly surrounded by reports as a constant supply of memorable- often profane- quotes. His blend of near-madness and gung-ho bravery is displayed most clearly when he charges out into the middle of the street in Tunisia and fires with his revolver at two strafing German planes flying past overhead. Despite the frustrations his eccentricies sometimes caused Bradley and the unseen Eisenhower, Patton whipped 2nd Corps into shape upon his arrival in Tunisia and shortly thereafter smashed a counterattack by the 10th Panzer Division (which supplies the film's largest battle scene). The battles in Patton are few and far between; this is not an action movie. More time is spent on character development, and his interactions with the low-key, sensible, often frustrated Bradley. After victory in Tunisia, Patton moves on to Sicily and Italy, where he takes great satisfaction in capturing key cities ahead of the equally egotistical- and slower moving- British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (Michael Bates). While it would be easy to dismiss Patton as a power-mad war monger, it's a tribute to the direction and screenplay that he is a fully three-dimensional, and very human character. Upon his visit to a hospital we see that he cares deeply for his injured soldiers, and it is perhaps because he is so obviously moved by his experience there that he reacts so harshly to the shell-shocked soldier (Tim Considine) he next encounters, providing the slapping incident for which he is perhaps best known. Ordered to apologize by Ike, Patton soon afterward neglects to mention the Russian allies in a speech in England, and is forced to sit as a decoy during the D-Day invasion. But his fates improve when he is placed in charge of 3rd Army in France, and defeats the German offensive in the Battle of the Bulge. During this entire period he is endlessly discussed at German High Command headquarters in Berlin by Colonel General Jodl (Richard Münch) and Captain Steiger (Siegfried Rauch). Field Marshal Rommel (Karl Michael Vogler) also drops by from time to time.
Malden as Bradley is not particularly memorable, but this is mostly because he has been paired with such an untoppable performance. Bradley is the only other character with significant screentime, and even he does little more than play off of Patton. The real Bradley served as an advisor for this film, and his influence shows, as time and again Malden plays the reasonable straight man to the apparently unstable and/or ruthless Scott, standing up for the common soldiers endangered by Patton's vain adventuring. I am not an authority on Bradley, so I won't dispute the portrayal, but he just seems too perfectly noble. Of the other somewhat significant characters, Bates bears a good resemblance to Monty and plays the role with gusto, but his part is written to make Montgomery look like a preening twit. It's a not entirely inaccurate but exaggerated and one-dimensional portrayal. Vogler also does a fine job as a blunt and intelligent Rommel, but has only three brief scenes. Münch and Rauch do nothing more than stand around headquarters discussing Patton (Jodl was a real person, but the fictional Steiger is obviously just a way of telling the audience things about Patton). Rounding out the supporting cast are Ed Binns as Major General Bedell Smith, Paul Stevens as Patton's obesquious aid Codman, and Clint Ritchie as a battle-weary tank commander. We see nothing of their lives; they exist in the film to discuss and react to Scott, and that's all they're needed for. This is unquestionably Scott's show; he becomes Patton. At the end of the war, when the Germans have been defeated and he discovers no one needs him, he is lost, like an actor without a stage to perform on. The final scene is a poignant one; Bradley and Montgomery have been promoted and Rommel is dead, and Patton is left walking alone across a field in Bavaria, seemingly aware that he has outlived his usefulness. Though it follows only two years of his life, Patton tells more about the man than many full-length biographies.
RATING: 
