Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Patton is the forty-third film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. **The Sound of Music will be reviewed out of order so we can see it in theaters War holds a unique space in the American imagination and the men who wage it successfully are frequently idolized accordingly in our media. This dynamic holds especially true for World War II. It makes sense, as much as any war in history, it is one where the losing side was a genuine representation of evil. Some quarter decade after the end of the war, with the United States mired in one of its most regrettable military interventions, Franklin J Schaffner immortalized a complicated American general in Patton. Even if you’ve never seen Patton, odds are you’ve at least come across its famous star spangled opening monologue (pictured above) in full or part. General George S Patton (George C Scott in perhaps his most recognizable role,) covered in military ribbons and backgrounded by an enormous American Flag, rallies a group of soldiers off screen. His message is jingoistic, bloodthirsty and proud. “We're not just going to shoot the bastards. We're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.” exclaims the titular war hero. Schaffner’s film explores the many exploits and personality quirks of General Patton as through his to prominence leading the US Army in Africa, the backlash to his overly harsh tactics and his redemption rescuing the 101st Airborne. This Patton is a military savant with a loud mouth, a man who simply cannot get out of his way long enough to let his successes speak for him. An amateur poet, he sees himself in a lineage of great war heroes of history. If, in a past life, he oversaw great victories in the Peloponnesian War, what could possibly hold him back now? Patton is not explicitly a hagiography of the cantankerous general, but ultimately it functions as one. The general’s inability to work with others and habitual self-aggrandizement are key facets of his characterizations. So predictable is Patton the Nazi intelligence officers are routinely able to clock his plans. This precognition does the Germans no good and speaks to where the film falls short as a biopic. Of course it is good that history’s greatest villains failed against the Allied general’s plans, but as a bit of storytelling it means Patton’s genius always overshadows his faults. As seen in his opening monologue, Patton — for all of his tactical genius — was a tremendously bloodthirsty warmonger. It is genuinely shocking that a film so deferential to someone deeply committed to the art of war was as lauded as it was in the deepest part of the backlash to the Vietnam War. Indeed, there has not been another Best Picture winner since to glorify a modern war figure quite like this. As for the filmmaking, it is certainly well shot and framed. The epic landscapes are impressive and the bombardments come through with intensity. If only the pacing of the story could carry the same propulsion. Patton never really learns to tone down his harsher instincts and those very faults vindicate him in the end. As a piece of character building it is lacking and the lack of growth makes much of the film feel dull. What is so unfortunate about that flat characterization is that it does not allow Scott to play the totality of the man. Despite it, he still won Best Actor — an award he declined — but the great performance could have been an all time one with more meat on the bone. In some ways Patton feels more like a relic than some of the films released decades before. Eventually the counterculture that influenced the 60s and 70s would find its way into Hollywood for the better. For the time being, Patton serves as something of a last gasp for a bygone era. That era had some great films, Patton is not exactly one of them. 5/10
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