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Watch Patton: The Test of Time
by Hadley Ajana
Patton is a 170-minute character portrait of this country’s greatest WWII combat general. It’s often cited as a war film or a biography, but it’s neither. War is the backdrop for the drama of Patton’s struggles with himself; the film’s focus on just a few years makes it too narrow to be considered a man’s life story. It’s easy to forgive those who think it’s a biography, though, since George C. Scott’s Academy-award winning performance makes us feel as if we know the general. As one reviewer put it, “Scott became so identified with the character, and played the general so perfectly, that the Patton of documentaries has since occasionally been referred to as ‘an imposter.’”
As is often noted, the film was introduced to the public at the height of the Vietnam War in 1970. It’s poignant to think of the famous opening scene in that context. Patton addresses his troops in front of a glorious American flag that fills the screen. In riding boots with a stick at his side, the decorated general urges the troops to war. “Americans love the sting of battle,” he proclaims. Preparing the men to attack the enemy, he urges, “We will cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.” It’s difficult to hear that without a post-Vietnam conscience.
It’s not the lines about the enemy that are the most anachronistic, though. It’s what Patton says about us that is out of place today: “Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.” Vincent Canby, reviewing the film for the New York Times in 1970, wrote that liberals could only view this bragging as camp. In 2004, it sounds, well…naïve. Was there a time when war was good and Americans had never been defeated? By 1970, the writing had been on the wall for a couple of years, and though the translation from Vietnamese to English hadn’t made its way all around the country yet, most probably knew that Patton was talking about an entirely different America, even if the full ramifications of the Tet offensive hadn’t really sunk in yet. Still, war must have meant something entirely different to Americans in 1970 than it does today.
One final point to make about this film and the Vietnam War: As Roger Ebert has pointed out, the opening speech also brings to mind “the most memorable of all war movie speeches, Col. Kilgore’s ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ from Apocalypse Now." Both screenplays were co-written by Francis Ford Coppola. The reason Patton stands the test of time, though (and I don’t think Apocalypse Now will), is that it is neither pro-war nor anti-war. It stands generally neutral on the subject. War between nations is treated as an abstraction. The real battle in this film involves Patton and himself.
The character of Patton, as written for this film and as portrayed by Scott, is an ego-maniac -- stubborn, a genius, vain, sometimes unstable, and at times narrow-minded. He’s also a decent man, by most accounts, capable of sensitivity, a poet who believed in reincarnation, destiny, and the hand of God. In viewing the film again recently I revisited these issues with the question of whether Patton was an introvert or extrovert in mind. I found, though, after researching reviews, that, as usual, Roger Ebert was way ahead of me. In an article dated 17 March 2002, Ebert describes Scott’s Patton as “a many-layered man who desires to appear one-level,” a perfect description of the film’s dynamics. The question then, thanks to Ebert’s insight, can be abstracted so that one might ask not just whether Patton was an introvert masquerading as an extrovert, but whether it’s possible for an extrovert to be deep. Are these two qualities mutually exclusive?
If I can prove, within the bounds of the film, that Patton is both an extrovert and deep, and then I can demonstrate that the piece works because it rings true, then the answer to the question must be no. While depth and introversion are often found together, extroverts, too, can be many-layered.
One might begin a discussion of Patton’s psychological orientation by considering his most endearing quality -- unbelievable political ineptitude. Twice he finds himself in deep trouble when remarks he made that he thought were off the record find their way into print. As a matter of practicality, he embraces former Nazis after the war. He distrusts WWII allies the Soviets for reasons that aren’t ever elucidated (or maybe it’s assumed that Cold War audiences don’t need a reason to hate the Soviets?). One might think an extrovert could do a little better, but the knack for misjudging others need not be the prevue of introverts. It’s really Patton’s big mouth that does him the most harm in these situations, and that’s certainly the hallmark of an extrovert.
Patton is a show off. While under attack in North Africa from enemy air fire, the general runs into the street to fire at the planes using only his pistol. Here is a real-life observation about Patton’s garish nature written by Dwight MacDonald during WWII: “My favorite general is George S. Patton, Jr. Some of our generals, like Stilwell, have developed a sly ability to simulate human beings. But Patton always behaves as a general should…He wears special uniforms, which, like Goering, he designs himself and which are calculated, like the ox horns worn by ancient Gothic chieftains, to strike terror into the enemy (and into any rational person, for that matter).” Patton grandstands: he stands up as he rides in his General’s Jeep, he directs traffic like a maestro, makes speeches. It’s hard to imagine more extroverted characteristics.
The most difficult part of Patton’s personality to wrap one’s mind around is his concept of relationships, which bears heavily on assessing introverted or extroverted orientation. Patton does know how to work a crowd. His rhetorical skill time and again is used to great advantage, from exhorting troops, to charming British ladies on the home front, to wooing liberated French civilians in French. He has the extrovert’s touch in communicating en masse.
While the film focuses on Patton’s career and makes no mention of his personal life (no reference is made in three hours to a friend, relative, or love interest), he is still a man one might describe as soulful. Here’s an excerpt of his poetry:
“Through the travail of ages
Midst the pomp and toils of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon a star.
As if through a glass, and darkly,
The age-old strife I see,
For I fought in many guises, many names,
But always me.” |
Though nominally, at least, Christian, Patton was convinced he had had past lives and believed that he had fought in the great Punic Wars and had served Napoleon. This informs his sense of destiny, as well. Sidelined due to politicking, Patton rails about missing the invasion of Europe: “The last great opportunity of a lifetime and I’m left out of it? God will not allow it to happen.”
The general is obviously educated (the film makes a point of highlighting his fluent French) and well-read. Again I rely on Ebert’s characterization: “He [Patton] has a classical quotation for every occasion. ‘You son of a bitch,’ he gloats after outsmarting Rommel, ‘I read your book!’”
One of the best-known incidents of Patton’s life occurred in Sicily when the general visited a war hospital. After touchingly interacting with several men wounded in battle, Patton encounters a G.I. suffering shell-shock. He literally slaps the helmet off the boy’s head, calling him a coward, then threatens to shoot him, and insists he be thrown out of the tent so that brave wounded men might not have to suffer his presence. (Patton was later ordered by superiors to apologize for this, and the bad publicity side-lined his career). Instead of coming off as shallow or insensitive, though, the incident only adds to our perception of Patton as a deeply passionate man with more sensibility than sense.
Finally, one must consider the entirety of a film, not just the plot. Jerry Goldsmith’s score for this movie enhances the complexity of Patton. While this three-hour film has only about 30 minutes of music, it is used quite effectively. The echoing triple trumpets at well-timed moments remind us of Patton’s view of history, time, and himself: cyclical and destined. The backdrop of the film is the most widespread conflict of the 20 th century, but the film, like the score, is a contemplative, intelligent, serene meditation on life and fate. It doesn’t have much to do with WWII. In fact, Patton seems singularly unaware of the causes and effects of this specific war, while being consumed with battle in general. The music completes the sense of Patton as a man of all time.
Having demonstrated that Patton is both an extrovert and deep, the only thing left for me to do now is prove some objective correlative. Is this character believable?
Karl Malden plays the only other personality in the movie we get to know besides the film’s namesake. General Omar Bradley is meant to be a foil for Patton. He is level-headed, diplomatic, almost saintly, appalled at Patton’s vain use of men and supplies to satisfy his own egoistic ambitions. While one gets the feeling Bradley was supposed to be the sane to Patton’s manic, the literary device seems contrived. One wonders if it were done just to flatter Bradley, the film’s technical adviser. Bradley comes off as unbelievable; not Patton.
It’s the use of a German officer assigned to do a work-up on Patton that adds perspective. Periodically we check in with the Germans as they try to outsmart the U.S. strategy. The young officer assigned the task of researching the great American combat general informs his superiors that Patton is an anachronism, a sixteenth century warrior in a twentieth century war. Building on this insight, he is able to predict Patton’s next move. This makes the randomness of Patton’s characteristics come together to form a pattern of character. When Patton is ordered to sit out the invasion of Normandy after the slapping incident, the Germans can’t believe Americans would actually sideline their best general for reasons of politics. It makes the others seem out of their minds, and Patton perfectly reasonable.
The film itself, does this, too, of course. It’s the coherent image of a man who knows his destiny and then fulfills it, despite what others say about or think of him. This makes the character study believable. Isn’t it the way we all feel about ourselves from time to time? No one around us knows or understands the mission we’re on. We’re crazy and we know it. We can be tender to those we admire and turn to threaten those who jeopardize our plan. We’ve all had the wrong friends and the wrong enemies at times. We’ve all been sidelined just as our goal comes into reach. But God has a plan for us, even if other people don’t know it. For those of any vision, for people who believe in themselves, Patton is utterly believable because of his contradictions, not in spite of them.
The beautiful construction of the plot mirrors the nature of Patton’s existence. In the last few scenes of the film, Patton tries to confront a life without the military (he is forced into retirement) and a world without war. The General reflects on Roman pomp and the notion that all glory is fleeting. After narrowly missing being hit by a car, he walks off into history with his beloved and cowardly dog at his side. For those who know the real-life end to Patton’s life, the near-miss has a special meaning: Patton died in a car accident in 1945. With the war over, his destiny fulfilled, one imagines that the old warrior did not know what to do with himself. The Germans commented that Patton wouldn’t survive without Berlin to fight against. It’s not a sad ending, though, because we sense what Patton believed: old soldiers never die; they’re born to fight another day.
Film review by James Berardinelli. 1994. “Top All-Time 100” at movie-reviews.colossus.net. http://movie-reviews/colossus.net/movies/p/patton.html. 9/4/2004.
Quoted in Vincent Canby movie review of Patton. New York Times. 2-5-1970. New York Times. com
more reviews by Hadley Ajana
