PATTON

All Americans love the sting of battle, That's why we've never lost a war....





Starring Karl Malden (General Omar N. Bradley)

Malden), that Bradley seems to have gone through World War II looking always as if he were about to weep over the sheer, lovable
cussedness of the man.

The most refreshing thing about Patton is that here—I think for the first time—the subject matter and the style of the epic war movie are
perfectly matched. War was, for Patton, his destiny and sometimes great fun. Thus the big, magnificently staged battle scenes (photographed
in marvelous, clear, deep focus), are not giving the
lie to a film that, like The Longest Day, would have us believe piously that war is hell.

Under Franklin J. Schaffner's superior direction (as well as under the supervision of what I assume to have been a number of assistant
directors, second unit men, and technical advisers), the key incidents in Patton's campaigns from North Africa and Sicily to his extraordinary
post D-Day dash across France are
reproduced as giant, largely impersonal panoramas. The destruction of life is viewed from observation posts and mulled over later in
bivouacs that, more often than not, are splendid,
confiscated palaces.

For Patton, with his sense of déjà vu—his conviction that in earlier lives he had fought in ancient Greece, at Carthage, at Moscow—
war was a kind of timeless abstraction, unconnected to specific causes and effects.

The movie takes much the same point of view of Patton, seeing him as a man of the ages whose genius as a tactician excused his vanities,
his ignorances, and his seeming mental instability (as when, in Sicily, he began slapping shell-shocked soldiers for their cowardice).
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. (PG, 171 minutes).

As General George Patton, George C. Scott may have been decked out with a phony nose,
but this is the only false element in his flawless performance.


By VINCENT CANBY



"My favorite general," Dwight Macdonald wrote during World War II, "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)."

In much the same way, Patton: A Salute to a Rebel is likely to strike terror into any rational person who refuses—perhaps absurdly—to believe that war is man's most noble endeavor. The movie, which opened last night at the Criterion Theater, is a huge, initially ambivalent but finally adoring, Pop portrait of one of the most brilliant and outrageous American military figures of the last one hundred years.

It's both fascinating and appalling, the sort of extravagant, technically superior spectacle that only a big Hollywood movie company could afford to make, and the story of a man about whom only the Establishment could become genuinely sentimental.

Patton, the movie keeps telling us, is "a magnificent anachronism," "a sixteenth-century man lost in the twentieth century," a man who damn well loved war, was surprised and somewhat taken aback when men near to him were killed, who wrote poetry, quoted the Bible, had the political instincts of a California grape, and was, according to those who knew him best, basically decent.

George S. Patton, Jr. (George C. Scott) is featured in the opening scene before the backdrop of a huge American flag. The film begins with his classic, six-minute monologue about Americans and their fighting spirit. [The screenwriters took excerpts from many of Patton's actual speeches, edited them, and created this enduring scene.


PATTON'S SPEECH










You know, by god, I actually pity those poor bastards we're goin' up against.
...Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you've heard about America not wanting to fight - wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost and never will lose a war, because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Now, an army is a team - it lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap... Now, we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. You know, by god, I actually pity those poor bastards we're goin' up against. By god, I do. We're not just gonna shoot the bastard, we're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel. Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them, spill their blood, shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do. Now there's another thing I want you to remember. I don't want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We're not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him by the nose and we're gonna kick him in the ass. We're going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we're gonna go through him like crap through a goose. Now, there's one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home, and you may thank god for it. Thirty years from now when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you: 'What did you do in the Great World War II?', you won't have to say: 'Well, I shoveled s--t in Louisiana.' All right, now you sons-of-bitches, you know how I feel and I will be proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle anytime, anywhere. That's all.