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. The film 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 premiered in New York City on February 5, 1970 before being released by 20th Century Fox on April 2, 1970. The film grossed $61.7 million against a budget of $12 million. It won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Scott also won the Best Actor for his performance, though he declined the award.
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.
Plot During World War II, the II Corps suffers a severe defeat at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in North Africa. Hard-charging General George S. Patton is sent to take command; he reorganizes the corps, and imposes strict but necessary discipline. Frustrated by what he perceives as British commander Bernard Montgomery monopolization of the Allied effort—Montgomery's forces had chased Rommel's forces and thus relieved pressure on the Americans following Kasserine—Patton leads the corps to redemption at the Battle of El Guettar.
Following Allied victory in North Africa, Patton and Montgomery propose competing plans for the Allied invasion of Sicily. Patton recommends landing his U.S. Seventh Army near Palermo. Commanding officer Harold Alexander opts for Montgomery's more cautious plan, landing Patton’s forces at Gela. Although initially intended to support Montgomery, Patton pushes northwest, taking Palermo and racing to Messina before the British. During the campaign, he visits a field hospital and slaps a soldier for cowardice, sparking public outrage and requiring a formal apology.
Patton is then sidelined by Eisenhower for the Allied invasion of France and placed in command of the fictitious First United States Army Group in London, a decoy to mislead the Germans about the main invasion location. At a public gathering in Knutsford, Patton remarks that the postwar world will be dominated by Anglo-Americans, alarming Allied leaders. George Marshall must decide whether Patton's comments warrant sending him home in disgrace.
Weeks after the Normandy landings, Patton takes command of the Third Army, reporting to his former subordinate, Omar Bradley. Under his leadership, the Third Army sweeps across France, but is forced to halt before entering Germany due to fuel and supply allocations to Montgomery's forces. Frustrated, Patton confronts Bradley, who warns him again about the dangers of speaking freely.
During the Battle of the Bulge, Patton's staff plans a bold operation to relieve the trapped 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne. After Germany capitulates, Patton's candid comparisons of American politics to Nazism create further controversy, and he is relieved of command of the Third Army. He is retained to help oversee the occupation of Germany. In the film's closing sequence, Patton narrowly avoids a fatal accident while walking with his bull terrier, and his voiceover reflects on the fleeting nature of glory, especially that achieved through military conquest:
Cast
George C. Scott as General George S. Patton Karl Malden as General Omar N. Bradley David Bauer as Lieutenant General Harry Buford Edward Binns as Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith John Doucette as Major General Lucian Truscott Michael Strong as Brigadier General Hobart Carver, based on Hobart Gay Peter Barkworth as Colonel John Welkin Lawrence Dobkin as Colonel Gaston Bell Paul Stevens as Colonel Charles R. Codman Morgan Paull as Captain Richard N. Jenson Stephen Young as Captain Chester B. Hansen James Edwards as Sergeant William George Meeks Tim Considine as a shell-shocked soldier Michael Bates as Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery Jack Gwillim as Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander Gerald Flood as Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder John Barrie as Air Vice-Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham Frank Latimore as Lieutenant Colonel Henry Davenport Karl Michael Vogler as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel Richard Münch as Colonel General Alfred Jodl Siegfried Rauch as Captain Oskar Steiger
Production Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and Rod Steiger declined the role of Patton. Steiger later said it was his greatest mistake. Charlton Heston was considered for the role of Omar Bradley before Karl Malden was cast.
Development Attempts to make a film about the life of Patton had been made since he died in 1945 but his widow, Beatrice, resisted. 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. McCarthy also sought co-operation from The Pentagon; it 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.
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. Edmund H. North was later brought in to help work on the script. 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.
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 that Bradley despised Patton. As the film was made without Patton's diaries, it largely relied upon observations by Bradley and attempts by other military contemporaries to reconstruct Patton's thoughts and motives. 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."
Filming
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. 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.
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). Interior shots were filmed in Seville.
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).
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.
Opening
The film opens with Scott's rendering of Patton's speech to the Third Army, set against a huge American flag.Travers, Steven. "The Duke, the Longhorns, and Chairman Mao: John Wayne's Political Odyssey." 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 bass-baritone voice is the opposite of Patton's high-pitched, nasal and somewhat squeaky tenor, a point noted by historian S.L.A. Marshall. 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."
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.
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.
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