Patton is a 1970 American biographical war film about U.S. General George S. Patton during World War II. It stars George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Michael Bates, and Karl Michael Vogler. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, who based their screenplay on the biography Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago and Omar N. Bradley's memoir A Soldier's Story. The film was shot in 65mm Dimension 150 by cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp, and has a music score by Jerry Goldsmith.
Patton won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The opening monologue, delivered by George C. Scott as General Patton with an enormous American flag behind him, remains an iconic and often quoted image in film. The film was a success and has become an American classic.
In 2003, Patton was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film's famous beginning has General George S. Patton (George C. Scott) giving a speech to an unseen audience of American troops, with a huge American flag in the background.
The scene then shifts to North Africa at the start of 1943, where Patton takes charge of the demoralized American II Corps in North Africa after the Battle of the Kasserine Pass. After reinstilling discipline in his soldiers, he leads them to victory at the Battle of El Guettar, though he is bitterly disappointed to learn afterward that Erwin Rommel (Karl Michael Vogler) was not his opponent.
Patton is shown to believe in reincarnation, while remaining a devout Christian. At one point during the North Africa campaign, Patton takes his staff on an unexpected detour to the site of the ancient Battle of Zama. There he reminisces about the battle, insisting to his second in command, General Omar Bradley (Karl Malden) that he was there.
After North Africa is secured, he participates in the invasion of Sicily but his proposal to land his US Seventh Army in the north west of the island is rejected in favour of the more cautious plan of British General Bernard Law Montgomery, in which the British and American armies are to land side-by-side in the south-east of Sicily. Frustrated at the slow progress of the campaign, Patton defies orders, racing to the northwest to capture the city of Palermo and then narrowly beats Montgomery in a race to capture the Sicilian port of Messina in the north east of the island. During this period Patton displays aggression to the point of mental imbalance, to the obvious disquiet of his subordinates Bradley and Truscott. Eventually Patton is relieved of command for slapping a shell-shocked soldier - whom he accuses of cowardice - in an Army hospital.
For this incident, and for his tendency to speak his mind to the press which gets the general in further trouble, he is sidelined during the long-anticipated D-Day landings, being placed in command of the fictional First United States Army Group in south-east England as a decoy. German General Alfred Jodl (Richard Münch) and Captain Steiger (Siegfried Rauch) are both convinced that Patton will be chosen to lead the invasion of Europe.
Fearing he will miss out on his destiny, he begs his former subordinate, General Omar Bradley, for a command before the war ends. He is given the Third United States Army and distinguishes himself by rapidly sweeping across France until his tanks are halted by lack of fuel, and later relieving the vital town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Patton then smashes through the "West Wall" and drives into Germany itself.
Patton has previously remarked to a British crowd that America and Great Britain would dominate the post-war world, which is viewed as insulting to the Russians. After the Germans capitulate, he insults a Russian officer at a celebration; fortunately, the Russian insults Patton right back, leading to a defusing of the situation. In the end, Patton's outspokenness loses him his command once again, though he is kept on to see to the rebuilding of Germany.
The film ends with Patton walking his dog, a bull terrier named Willie, and George C. Scott relating in a voice over the celebration of returning heroes of ancient Rome, who were given great parades and led them, followed by troops and slaves. The voice over ends with the words, "A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning, that all glory is fleeting".
There were several attempts to make the movie, starting in 1953. The Patton family was approached by the producers for help in making the film. They wanted access to Patton's diaries and input from family members. By coincidence, the day they asked the family was the day after the funeral of Beatrice Ayer Patton, the general's widow. After that, the family was dead set against the movie and refused to give any help to the filmmakers.
Because of this, Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North wrote the film from two biographies: Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago and A Soldier's Story by Omar Bradley. In 2005, Patton's wife's "Button Box" manuscript was finally released by his family, with the posthumous release of Ruth Ellen Patton Totten's book, The Button Box: A Daughter's Loving Memoir of Mrs. George S. Patton. Washington Times - Gen. Patton's wife, a New York citizen
The opening
Patton opens with Scott's rendering of Patton's famous military "Pep Talk" to members of the Third Army, set against a huge American flag. Coppola and North had to tone down Patton's actual words and statements in this scene, as well as throughout the film, to avoid an R rating; in the opening monologue, the word "fornicating" replaced "fucking" when criticizing the Saturday Evening Post magazine. Also, Scott's gravelly voice is practically the opposite of Patton's, which was high-pitched and somewhat nasal.
When Scott learned that the speech would open the film, he refused to do it, as he believed that it would overshadow the rest of his performance. Director Franklin J. Schaffner lied and assured him that it would be shown at the end. It was shot in a basement room.
All the medals and decorations shown on Patton's uniform in the monologue are authentic replicas of those actually awarded to Patton. However, the general never wore all of them in public. He wore them all on only one occasion, in his backyard in Virginia at the request of his wife, who wanted a picture of him with all his medals. The producers used a copy of this photo to help recreate this "look" for the opening scene. However, the ivory-handled revolvers Scott wears in this scene are in fact Patton's, borrowed from the Patton museum.
The iconic opening scene has been parodied in numerous films, political cartoons and television shows. In Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Sheila Broflovski gives a speech to US troops at a USO show, urging war with Canada in front of an American flag. In Jackass 2.5, Johnny Knoxville and the rest of the Jackass crew, dressed in military attire, gives the introduction to the movie in front of a giant American flag; in the outro, Johnny gives an inspirational speech about the events of the film in the same manner (before a party breaks out). Harvey Korman, playing Patton, parodies the speech in an episode of The Carol Burnett Show. In the original "unhappy" ending of the 1986 musical Little Shop of Horrors, chorus girls Crystal, Ronette and Chiffon foretell America's doom while posed before a glittering version of Patton's flag backdrop; this backdrop was also used in the 1985 film Sesame Street Presents Follow That Bird.
Locations
Virtually the entire film was shot in Spain. One scene, which depicts Patton driving up to an ancient city that is implied to be Carthage, was shot in the ancient Roman city of Volubilis, located in Morocco. The early scene, wherein Patton and Muhammed V are reviewing Moroccan troops including the Goumiers, was shot at the Royal Palace in Rabat. One unannounced battle scene was shot the night before, which raised fears in the Royal Palace neighborhood of a coup d'état. One paratrooper was electrocuted in power lines, but none of this battle footage appears in the film. Also a scene at the dedication of the welcome center in Knutsford, England was filmed at the actual site. The scenes set in Africa and Sicily were shot in the south of Spain, while the winter scenes in Belgium were shot near Madrid (to which the production crew rushed when they were informed that snow had fallen).
It has been noted that in the scene where Patton arrives to establish his North African command, a supposedly "Arab" woman is selling "pollos y gallinas" (chickens and hens) in Spanish, which is not normally spoken by local people in Tunisia.
Roger Ebert said of George C. Scott, "It is one of those sublime performances in which the personalities of the actor and the character are fulfilled in one another." Online film critic James Berardinelli has called Patton his favorite film of all time and "...to this day one of Hollywood's most compelling biographical war pictures."
According to Woodward and Bernstein's book The Final Days, it was also Richard Nixon's favorite film. He screened it several times at The White House and during a cruise on the Presidential yacht. Before the 1972 Nixon visit to China, then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai specially watched this film in preparation for his meeting with Nixon. It was also a personal favorite of Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes.
Scott's performance won him an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1971. He famously refused to accept it, citing a dislike of the voting and even the actual concept of acting competition. He was the first actor, though not the last, to do so (Marlon Brando would, two years later, decline his Oscar for The Godfather in 1973).
The film won six additional Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, and Best Art Direction (Urie McCleary, Gil Parrondo, Antonio Mateos, Pierre-Louis Thévenet).
It was nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects and Best Music, Original Score.
In 2006, the Writers Guild of America selected the adapted screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund North as the 94th best screenplay of all time. The screenplay was based upon the biographies A Soldier's Story by General Omar Bradley, and Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago.
The "Best Picture" Oscar is on display at the George C. Marshall Museum at the Virginia Military Institute, courtesy of Frank McCarthy.
A made-for-television sequel, The Last Days of Patton, was produced in 1986. Scott reprised his title role. The movie was based on Patton's final weeks after being mortally injured in a car accident, with flashbacks of Patton's life.
