Patton (film)

Patton
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Franklin J. Schaffner
Screenplay by	Francis Ford Coppola Edmund H. North
Based on	Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago A Soldier's Story by Omar N. Bradley
Produced by	Frank McCarthy
Starring	George C. Scott Karl Malden
Cinematography	Fred J. Koenekamp
Edited by	Hugh Fowler
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Color process	Color by Deluxe
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	February 5, 1970 (New York City) April 2, 1970 (United States)
Running time	172 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Languages	English German French Russian
Budget	$12.6 million[2]
Box office	$45 million (rentals)[3]

Patton is a 1970 American epic biographical war film about U.S. General George S. Patton during World War II. It stars George C. Scott as Patton and Karl Malden as General Omar Bradley, and was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, who based their screenplay on Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago and Bradley's memoir, A Soldier's Story.

Patton won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Although Scott won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role, he declined the award.^[4] The opening monologue, delivered by Scott as General Patton with an enormous American flag behind him, remains an iconic and often quoted image in film. 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 Academy Film Archive also preserved Patton in 2003.^[5]

Plot[edit]

General George S. Patton addresses an unseen audience of American troops. His speech places emphasis on the importance as well as his own demands that his men defeat the enemy by working and fighting as a team.

In its very first combat encounter with the German Afrika Korps at the Battle of Kasserine Pass, the II Corps is humiliatingly defeated by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Patton is placed in command of II Corps and immediately begins instilling his authority amongst his untested and poorly disciplined troops. Alongside the poor condition of American soldiers in the II Corps, Patton also identifies how his British counterpart, General Bernard Montgomery, is constantly monopolising the allied effort to suit his own needs.

The eventual Allied victory in North Africa prompts Patton and Montgomery to come up with competing plans for the Allied invasion of Sicily. Patton's plan, drawn from reference to the Peloponnesian War, highlights the strategic importance of Syracuse; hypothesising that it's fall would trigger an immediate evacuation of Sicily. Patton proposes that Montgomery captures Syracuse, whereas he will land near Palermo then capture Messina to cut off the withdrawal. Though the plan initially impresses General Harold Alexander, to whom Patton and Montgomery report, General Dwight D. Eisenhower turns it down in favour of Montgomery's more cautious plan that places both armies in a side-by-side landing in the Gulf of Gela. The plan essentially relegates the American forces under Patton into protecting the British advance, and when the allies do finally liberate Syracuse the evacuation predicted by Patton ultimately proves correct, but without allied forces in the north thousands of Italian and German forces are able to retreat. The rear guard left behind to stall the allies bogs down the invasion, prompting an already irate Patton to drive west and capture Palermo before narrowly beating Montgomery to Messina. Though his advance breaks the deadlock in Sicily, his brunt aggression does not sit well with his subordinates Omar Bradley and Lucian Truscott. During a visit to a field hospital, Patton notices a soldier crying amongst the wounded and dead, and in a fit of rage accuses the soldiers of cowardice and slaps the soldier before demanding he is returned immediately to the front lines. As a consequence, Eisenhower demands Patton apologise to the soldier in question, Patton however apologises to his entire command. Despite this, Patton is shocked to find out that he has been sidelined for the coming Allied invasion of France.

Instead, Patton is placed in command of the fictitious First United States Army Group as a decoy in London; the Allied command confident in that keeping Patton in England will tell the Germans that he will lead the invasion of Europe. At a war driver in Knutsford, Patton remarks that the post-war world will be dominated by the British-American spheres of influence; viewed as a slight to the Soviet Union. Despite Patton's protest that he has done nothing wrong, the situation has already spiralled from his control, and the decision to send him home or remain in England is placed upon General George Marshall. Though not present for the Normandy invasion, Patton is given a command by his now superior General Bradley of the Third Army. Under his leadership, the Third Army sweeps brilliantly across France, but is brought to a halt just before entering Germany to allocate vital supplies to Montgomery's ambitious Operation Market Garden. Frustrated at again being sidelined to appease Montgomery, Patton demands to know why he was given a command if he cannot advance. Bradley quickly refutes that it was his actual decision to place him in Europe, not anyone else's. Bradley also lets his colleague and friend know that whilst there is no doubt he is skilled and capable, he does not know when to shut up.

During the Battle of the Bulge Patton devises a plan to relieve the trapped 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne, which he does before smashing through the Siegfried Line and into Germany. After Germany capitulates, Patton's outspokenness lands him in trouble once again when he compares American politics to Nazism. Though he is relieved of command, Patton is kept on to see the rebuilding of Germany. In a final scene Patton is seen walking Willie, his bull terrier. Patton's voice is heard;

For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory ... is fleeting.

Cast[edit]

Production[edit]

Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and Rod Steiger declined the role of Patton.^[6][7] Steiger later said it was his greatest mistake.^[8] Charlton Heston was considered for the role of Omar N. Bradley before Karl Malden was cast.^[7]

Development[edit]

Attempts to make a film about the life of Patton had been made since he died in 1945 but his widow, Beatrice, resisted.^[9] After her death in 1953, producer Frank McCarthy began the project and, the day after Beatrice was buried, the producers contacted the family for help in making the film, requesting access to Patton's diaries, as well as input from family members but the family declined to help.^[10] McCarthy also sought co-operation from The Pentagon; they also initially refused, as Patton's son, George Patton IV, was in the Army, and Patton's second daughter, Ruth, was married to an officer. By 1959, McCarthy had convinced the Army to co-operate.^[11][9]

20th Century Fox bought A Soldier's Story, the 1951 autobiography of General of the Army Omar Bradley (who features prominently in the film, played by Karl Malden). Francis Ford Coppola wrote the film script in 1963 based largely on Ladislas Farago's 1963 biography Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, and on A Soldier's Story.^[9][11][12] Edmund H. North was later brought in to help work on the script.^[11] The film was originally to be called Blood & Guts and William Wyler was originally scheduled to direct. Wyler quit before the planned starting date of January 1969.^[9]

Bradley, the only surviving five-star general officer in the United States after the death of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1969, served as a consultant for the film though the extent of his influence and input into the final script is largely unknown. While Bradley knew Patton, it was also well known that the two men were opposites in personality, and there is evidence to conclude that Bradley despised Patton.^[13][14] As the film was made without Patton's diaries, it largely relied upon observations by Bradley and other military contemporaries when they attempted to reconstruct Patton's thoughts and motives.^[15] In a review of the film, Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall, who knew both Patton and Bradley, stated, "The Bradley name gets heavy billing on a picture of [a] comrade that, while not caricature, is the likeness of a victorious, glory-seeking buffoon.... Patton in the flesh was an enigma. He so stays in the film.... Napoleon once said that the art of the general is not strategy but knowing how to mold human nature.... Maybe that is all producer Frank McCarthy and Gen. Bradley, his chief advisor, are trying to say."^[15]

Filming[edit]

The film started shooting February 3, 1969 and was shot at seventy-one locations in six countries, mostly in Spain, which had a lot of the U.S. Army's World War II surplus equipment.^[11][9] Francoist Spain had sustained a currency control for decades and filming in the country was the only way to indirectly recover the profits of the box office from American films. Cheap labor also encouraged runaway productions.^[16]

One scene, which depicts Patton driving up to an ancient city that is implied to be Carthage, was shot in the ancient Roman Mauretanian city of Volubilis, Morocco. The early scene, where 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. The scene at the dedication of the welcome centre in Knutsford, Cheshire, England, was filmed at the actual site. The scenes set in Tunisia and Sicily were shot in Almeria in the south of Spain; Pamplona in the north was used for France and Germany; while the winter scenes in Belgium, including for the Battle of the Bulge sequence, were shot near Segovia (to which the production crew rushed when they were informed that snow had fallen).^[17][11][9] Interior shots were filmed in Seville.^[9]

The film was shot by cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp in 65 mm Dimension 150, only the second film to be shot in that format after The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966).^[9]

A sizeable amount of battle scene footage was left out of the final cut of Patton, but a use was soon found for it. Outtakes from Patton were used to provide battle scenes in the made-for-TV film Fireball Forward, which was first broadcast in 1972. The film was produced by Patton producer Frank McCarthy and Edmund North wrote the screenplay. One of the cast members of Patton, Morgan Paull, appeared in this production.^[18]

Opening[edit]

The film opens with Scott's rendering of Patton's speech to the Third Army, set against a huge American flag.^[19] Coppola and North had to tone down Patton's actual words and statements in the scene, as well as throughout the rest of the film, to avoid an R rating; in the opening monologue, the word fornicating replaced fucking when he was criticizing The Saturday Evening Post. Also, Scott's gravelly and scratchy voice is the opposite of Patton's high-pitched, nasal and somewhat squeaky voice, a point noted by historian S.L.A. Marshall.^[15] However, Marshall also points out that the film contains "too much cursing and obscenity [by Patton]. Patton was not habitually foul-mouthed. He used dirty words when he thought they were needed to impress."^[15]

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 Schaffner assured him that it would be shown at the end. The scene was shot in one afternoon at Sevilla Studios in Madrid, with the flag having been painted on the back of the stage wall.^[20]

All the medals and decorations shown on Patton's uniform in the monologue are replicas of those actually awarded to Patton. However, the general never wore all of them in public and was in any case not a four-star general at the time he made the famous speeches on which the opening is based. 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.^{[citation needed]}

Music[edit]

The critically acclaimed score for Patton was composed and conducted by the prolific composer Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith used a number of innovative methods to tie the music to the film, such as having an echoplex loop recorded sounds of "call to war" triplets played on the trumpet to musically represent General Patton's belief in reincarnation. The main theme also consisted of a symphonic march accompanied by a pipe organ to represent the militaristic yet deeply religious nature of the protagonist.^[21] The music to Patton subsequently earned Goldsmith an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score and was one of the American Film Institute's 250 nominees for the top twenty-five American film scores.^[22] The original soundtrack has been released three times on disc and once on LP: through Twentieth-Century Fox Records in 1970, Tsunami Records in 1992, Film Score Monthly in 1999, and a two-disc extended version through Intrada Records in 2010.^[21][23]