George C. Scott is Old Blood & Guts

Rating: 10/10 (25 May 2006)

I saw this during it's initial theatrical release where it looks it's best up on the big screen. I've seen it on television several times since but it's nicely filmed movie that really needs a big screen to do it justice. The story of General George S. Patton during World War II who had been in the military for a long time before WWII. At the beginning of the war he outranked Generals Eisenhower and Bradley and by wars end they had moved up in ranks to both be his superiors. Much of the basis for the screenplay was derived from Ladislas Farago's 1963 book Patton: Ordeal and Triumph and from General Omar Bradley's 1951 book on his WWII war experiences called A Soldiers Story. Additional insight into the mind of Patton came from the 1947 book of Patton's memoirs based on his letters called War As I Knew It. Patton was a very different general from Bradley. Bradley was gentle, courteous, polite and concerned for the welfare of his troops and hated military pomp. Patton was called Old Blood and Guts and reveled in war. He designed his own uniforms and carried a pair of pearl handled colt 45's on his hips and loved projecting a larger-than-life mythic image. George C. Scott was reportedly the 6th actor to be considered for this role after the likes of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and Lee Marvin but as Patton you can't imagine anyone else in the role. Even seeing old newsreels of Patton himself he seems like an impostor to the film role of Scott. Scott dominated the picture and is in almost every scene for which his role earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor which he turned down. Karl Malden as Gen. Omar Bradley is the only other well-known actor in the film. Bradley served as a technical adviser on the film as did Gen. Paul D. Harris. The film's producer Frank McCarthy was himself a Brig. Gen. during WWII and worked for 20 years to get this film finally produced. It paid off with the Academy Award for Best Picture. Franklin J. Schaffer was reportedly the fifth choice to direct this film. He was known for his recent hit film Planet of the Apes and he would go on to direct Papillon and The Boys From Brazil but had a relatively short directorial career with only 14 films and none before or after Patton that compared to it. He won the Academy Award for Best Director. This is wonderfully photographed by cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp who had not done a big hit film before. He would go on to film Papillon, The Towering Inferno and Billy Jack and had marginal hits with The Amityville Horror, Uptown Saturday Night and The Other Side of Midnight but would never have a chance to do another big film like Patton. It got him an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography. Edmund H. North who had wrote screenplays for such films as Sink the Bismarck, Destry and The Day the Earth Stood Still and writer/director Francis Ford Coppola on the cusp of super stardom wrote the screenplay for which they received the Academy Award. The film also won Oscars for Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing and Best Sound. It's other nominations were for Best Effects and Best Music. This film received awards from all the major industry organizations including Writers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America, New York Film Critics, National Society of film Critics, National Board of Review, Motion Picture Sound Editors, American Cinema editors, BAFTA, The Luarel Awards and the Golden Globes. It's a long one at almost three hours but it's an epic war picture and a dramatic character study into the complex personality of a man who was loved by many, hated by many, feared by most and ultimately one of WWII's most respected soldiers. I would give this a 10.