A commanding George C. Scott performance makes Patton worth the long evening. Franklin J. Schaffner handles the battles with assurance, though his fascination with the general sometimes gets in the way of judging him.
Franklin J. Schaffner’s Patton is a forceful, intelligent military biography, worth its 172 minutes chiefly for George C. Scott. It studies a commander whose gifts for fighting seem inseparable from his appetite for it, and gives us plenty of reason to find him difficult company. The film is less convincing when it asks how such a man should be judged. Its confidence in putting him before us sometimes disguises a reluctance to answer that question.
George C. Scott gives General George S. Patton Jr. the immense assurance of someone who considers doubt a failing in other people. The bluster is funny because he plays it without asking to share the joke; Patton takes himself seriously enough for everyone. We laughed at the sheer size of his self-importance, then felt uneasy about how readily we enjoyed it. The flashes of humanity matter because they do not tidy away the rage or make his love of war easier to excuse.
The screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North lets intelligence and absurdity coexist in the same man. His conviction that he has been chosen for greatness is treated seriously enough to become troubling, rather than filed away as a colourful eccentricity. There is pleasure in the writing’s willingness to leave him difficult and disagreeable. There is also a limit to it: we learn a great deal about his temperament without always being given enough context to judge his authority.
Fred Koenekamp’s cinematography gives the battles the space they need, and the long views let the scale of the fighting register without a scramble of impressions. The director is good at making military activity feel organised, even when its purpose is destruction. Hugh S. Fowler’s editing sustains that sense of forward movement; for a film this long, the action seldom feels like an obligation between speeches. That clarity is a considerable pleasure, and helps keep the battle scenes from becoming merely noisy interruptions.
Jerry Goldsmith’s score is persuasive enough to make us wary of how much we are being encouraged to admire. We hear grandeur in it, but also something unsettled, which suits a man whose certainty has become alarming. The music helps the portrait more than the sheer extent of the fighting does. When the battle scenes take over, our interest in the individual soldiers is much thinner than our interest in the general.
Karl Malden, as General Omar N. Bradley, gives the film a useful steadiness around its dominant lead. Even so, this is the kind of war biography in which the man at the top gets nearly all the attention, and the narrowness matters. His ability, his temper and his ego can become explanations for everything. The film remains absorbing, but we wanted more examination of the military authority that allows his personality to count for so much.
Most critics recommend it, and we agree, with a reservation about how easily it can flatter the man it examines. There is enough humour and unease in the performance to keep admiration from becoming automatic, provided we pay attention to more than his confidence. Give it the full evening, but keep some distance from the general’s opinion of himself.
