Patton movie review & film summary (1970)

Consider the scene where Patton is dressed by his aide, who adjusts his helmet reverently on his head as if placing a crown. Patton regards himself in the mirror and muses to himself, "All my life I've wanted to lead a lot of men in a desperate battle." He could be an actor preparing to walk onto a stage. "General, the men don't always know when you're acting or not," a subordinate tells him after one flamboyant speech. "They don't need to know," Patton says. "Only I need to know."

Headlines and newsreels personified armies by referring to their generals: Rommel was defeated in Africa, Patton swept north through France. Patton saw it the same way, and when he promises he will liberate Massine before Montgomery gets there, he is thinking in the first person. Gen. Omar Bradley (Karl Malden), who has the film's only other significant leading role, quails at the risk of lives and equipment that Patton is willing to contemplate, because he does not quite see that for Patton his men and equipment are the limbs of his ego. Vanity and courage found their intersection in Patton. "If you were named admiral of the Turkish navy," Bradley tells him, "I believe your aides could dip into their haversacks and come up with the appropriate decoration."

"Patton" is not a war film so much as the story of a personality who has found the right role to play. Scott's theatricality is electrifying. As Patton he always stands up in his Jeep, loves making speeches, grandstands, plunges into the action to personally goad his men, even directs traffic. There is a touch of the manic about him. He seems to have no personal life. The film makes no mention of family, children, even close friends; his heart-to-heart talks are with himself. He seems formidably well-read, lecturing his subordinates on the history of the battlefields, the lessons of Napoleon, the experiences of earlier leaders who came this way. He has a classical quotation for every occasion. "You son of a bitch," he gloats after outsmarting Rommel, "I read your book!"

Scott's performance is not one-level but portrays a many-layered man who desires to appear one-level. Instead of adding tiresome behavioral touches, he allows us small glimpses of what may be going on inside. Having made a fetish of bravery, he obtains a dog that is terrified most of the time, and affectionately drags the cowardly beast wherever he goes. Told by the press that the American public is fascinated by his "pearl-handled revolver," he stone-faces: "Ivory. Only a pimp from a cheap New Orleans whorehouse would carry a pearl-handled revolver." That shows he's given it some thought. Early in the film, under surprise air attack by the Nazis, he stands in the middle of a street firing at them with the revolver. Crazy, yes, but it adds to the legend.